Lost in Time
by W1553
Summary: This is a spin of of my story "Stargate: The Million Year War". It starts seconds after the episode called "Faith" (S02E05) but it's standalone enough that you don't need to read what came before.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **So someone said this was good, something I didn't think when I looked through it some time ago, but maybe there's more people here who'll like this. But it's probably a bit rough around the edges.

**Disclaimer:** Nothing here is mine except the words and the way they are put together into sentences, the new original characters and lastly part of the concept. If I did own this I wouldn't have posted it for free to allow you to read it without paying. I acknowledged the laws of physics, math and other sciences, but as they might not fit into the mechanics necessary to make this story I reserve the right to make change to them if I find it necessary. **This holds true for the entire story and so I'll only write this here.**

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From inside his suit Major Roger Knight could see the village in front of them as he and the rest of the assault force commanded by Colonel Danell continued to press forward against the Ori lines which weakened with each step the soldiers took. When they finally pushed into the village they begun to stun and subdue both the civilians and the Ori soldiers until they reached the town square in front of the largest building in town were an army of Ori soldiers were making their stand against them, but the Tau'ri soldiers easily dispatched them as their shields absorbed the bolts from the Ori staffs and their own stunners required one impact to take out one Ori soldier.

When all of the Ori soldiers were unconscious they tied up everyone of the soldiers before they stormed the building, but there wasn't a single human being inside the doors, so they spread out and searched through the building, Roger going with the Colonel himself. Down through a hatch in the floor they found a dimly tunnel which they followed to an open door. Behind it they could see a man standing in front of a white and red altar, behind him rows of people were sitting on their knees and throughout the room chanting could be heard. Not wasting a second the Colonel kicked the door which such force that it unhinged and flew into the room into the man at the altar and crushed him on the altar moments before he stepped inside the room and stunned everyone in the room with his weapon.

Before Roger had a chance to assist the Colonel a stray stun ball impacted the altar and a prior staff which was leaned against it. Then all went white for a few seconds before Roger's eyes begun to make out the shape of the door and the rest of the tunnel while the room beyond stayed dark for a few more seconds until he forced himself into the dark room and saw what had happened to the people inside. What was left of the kneeling people was only their skeletons which had arced back with the hands holding the skulls. Closer to the altar the Colonel was standing in a simillar pose and when Roger reached the altar he could see the man who had been crushed, his skeleton being the only thing left, lying on his back with his arms spread out, in one hand he clutched the Prior staff and in the other was a book of origin.

Even before he removed the Colonel's helmet his armours sensors had marked the Colonel as dead, something the skull looking back at him confirmed when he remove the helmet of his superior. Ignoring the rest of the room Roger took a firm grip of the Colonel, checked his ammo and then made his way out of the room and back into the tunnel, when he got to the hatch he had some problems with getting the Colonel out, but then he got some help when two pair of hands grabbed the Colonel's shoulders and pulled him out of the hatch so that Roger himself could get out too.

"Sir we have lost contact with the Nightshadow and the rest of the fleet." One of the soldiers said as the trio carried the Colonel away from the hatch.

"Set up a transmitter and try to contact them on the long range frequencies." Roger ordered as they put down the Colonel on a table. "When did we lose contact with them?"

"We lost contact with the fleet just as a white flash was seen in the entire village Sir." The second soldier said as he handed the first a part of the long range communicator.

"There's no reason for us to stay here the Colonel took out target." Roger said as he took the Colonel's supplies. "We'll fall back from the village and try to contact the fleet or the SGC from there."

"Sir, shouldn't we instead fortify ourselves?" The soldier said. "We've won here today, there's no reason why we should retreat."

"We didn't come here to win, we came here to kill an enemy and free the people. The rest is up to Tomin and his faction to fix." Roger said as the first soldier returned shaking his head, no contact with the fleet nor the SGC could be made. "We're moving out now, give me a hand with the Colonel."

"Yes sir." The first said as he helped Roger with the Colonel.

"Everyone, fall back to the square outside." Roger said into his radio. "We'll be falling back to the plains outside the village so leave nothing behind."

When they final managed to drag the Colonel out of the building most of the soldiers had already gotten there and the last of them got there in under a minute. Then they begun to move at a moderate pace to make sure that those carrying others would be able to keep up, there were three soldiers who's armours had stopped working so they had to be carried out of there and then there was another four who's armour had been sending sparks flying and their shields made sure no scans would get through. After some questions Rogers was sure the light was the source of the problem, but it had mostly hit the high ranking soldiers, such as the Colonel and the other two Majors in the strike force, leaving him in charge, at least until they could get them all out of the armours.

When they begun to reach the outskirts of the village a small Ori force flanked them and surprisingly the staff blasts took out their shields in one shot and melted through their armour with another, something four of the soldiers experienced, what was even worse was that when they begun to return fire their stunner balls simply impacted their target without them falling, so they switched to the PP-90 instead and killed their attackers before moving on, carrying and dragging the wounded with them.

When they finally got far enough from the village they set up several of their portable shield generators just to be on the safe side but only one of the generators powered up for more than a few seconds as the rest depleted the ZPMs in an instant, then they begun to tend to the wounded. Sadly the nanites refused to help when they medics tried to use them to heal the wounded and to remove the armour they instead had to use the brute force and strength of their armours. Near the middle of the shield Roger was counting up the officers still in fighting shape, which was two lieutenants, one sergeant and five corporals, far to few to lead the three hundred men who were still in fighting condition.

"We're in deep shit men. We've lost all contact with the fleet as well as the SGC. On top of that the Colonel is dead. " Roger said to the officers. "As it is we're sitting ducks out here, we need a plan."

"Sir, I suggest that we take an Ori fighter and get a pair of rings." One of the corporals said, Veva she was called if Roger's memory served him right. "Then we take one of their ships and get the fuck out of here, Sir."

"There's no way in hell that will work Corporal." The sergeant said, his name was James if Roger's memory served him right. "It's too risky without proper shields and stunners."

"SG-1 took out dozen of Gua'uld motherships and at least a few Ori ships." Veva said. "They were four people, we're almost three hundred soldiers."

"But we're not SG-1." The sergeant said.

"Unless you have a better plan Sergeant the Corporal's idea will be the one we follow." Roger said.

"No Sir." The sergeant. "I don't have a better plan."

"Then you have the orders to a ring platform for us Corporal." Roger ordered. "And if you can, a suitable target to ring to wouldn't hurt."

"Yes sir." Veva said and left the group to gather up her troops for the mission.

"This won't end well Sir." The sergeant said as they officers watched Veva and her troops leave. "I'll bet my rank on it."

"Verry well, if she gets us a ring platform and a ship to capture you'll swap ranks, at least until we get back to the SGC or the fleet." Roger said. "If she fails you can have my rank for the duration of the mission."

"I didn't mean it that way Sir." The sergeant said.

"But you said it that way." Roger said in a final tone. "Now lets wait and see. I trust you will get us some proper defences in the meantime Sergeant." With those words Roger left the group and headed towards the area were the medics were doing what they could for the wounded

As he was walking Roger saw a man coming rushing towards him and his suit identified him as private Dax Clifton, science division.

"Sir, we have a small problem." Dax said as he came up to Roger.

"We have many problems right now Private." Roger said as he kept walking with Dax right next to him. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Part of our PP-90s seems to have broken down." Dax said as he stopped Roger and fired a shoot into the ground.

"That seems to be working fine to me." Roger said as he begun to lose his patience.

"But it's not." Dax said and knelled next to the bullet hole. "If it had been working as it should there would be a fire here, or embers at least. I don't know why, but the plasma chamber won't eject anything, same goes for most of our none mechanical equipment, the nanites included."

"So you're saying we have only the P-90 part of the PP-90?" Roger asked.

"Yes, exactly." Dax said as they continued on their way. "I think the reason why our suits are unaffected are because their shields protected them, but at the cost of themselves."

"Good work Dax." Roger said as they reached the medics. "See what equipment still works and bring me a list."

"Yes Sir." Dax said and hurried of to check the small amount of equipment they had.

"What can I help you with?" Roger asked the medic who was working on one of the injured soldiers.

"I don't need any help here." The medic said as she wrapped some bandages around the soldiers side. "But I think some of the other medics could use some help with removing the patient from the armours which are not responding to the opening command."

"Very well, I'll see what I can do." Roger said as he left the medic and sought out the soldiers who were still stuck inside their own armours and begun to pick apart the armours piece by piece.

A few hours as Roger and another soldier were in the process of dismantling the last of the armours and freeing its inhabitant a dull sound could be heard and it increased in volume until final a swarm of Ori fighters came over the horizon.

"Major." A voice came crackling over the radio. "We have the ring platform and some alternative means of transportation."

"Good work Veva." Roger said as he recognized the voice. "Drop it just outside shield and park the fighters on the other side."

"Yes Sir." She replied and a few minutes they flew over the shield and dropped the platform just outside before landing the fighters on the other side.

"Well then Sergeant." Roger said as he caught up with the rest of the officers who were on their way to the Ori fighters. "Looks like you were wrong."

"Not yet Sir." The sergeant said as they reached the fighters. "We still haven't captured a ship yet."

"But we will soon." Veva said as she and her men got out of the fighters and came to meet them. "They're in disarray after the loss of their leader and we've found out that at least one ship is completely unmanned at the moment, we can take it and be out of here before they know what has happened."

"Good work." Roger said. "It's your mission, so go and finish it along with the rest of the corporals and the lieutenants. Take half of the men along with you. Me and the Sergeant will lead the defense here to repel any attackers."

"Sir shouldn't one of the lieutenants lead the assault?" Veva said. "They have a higher rank after all."

"It's your plan and your mission Corporal." Roger said. "They lead these kind of assaults all the time."

"Yes Sir." Veva said with some hesitation before she signed for the others officers to follow so that they could gather up the needed soldiers.

About an hour later Veva and the rest reported that the ship was cleared and so the medics begun to move the injured to the ring platform for transport onto the ship. Just as they were reaching the platform with the first of the injured soldiers the sound of Ori fighters could be heard and before half of the injured soldiers were through they arrived and begun to bombard the shields they had set up, but thankfully they held firm around them and the injured were successfully moved through before the soldiers begun to pull back

"I'll get the ZPM and the shield generator Sir." The sergeant said and prepared to remove the ZPM and then rush back with it and the generator.

"On my mark. Three.. two... one.. mark." Roger shouted and saw the sergeant pull the ZPM and throw the generator onto his back a second after the ZPM lost power and the shield went down. From his position on the ring platform he fired at the incoming Ori fighters who had just made a pass in an attempt to keep them away, but as expected the fighters came back for another run and when the sergeant was no more than ten meters away they begun to fire on their position, but the sergeant pressed of and jumped the last three meters to the platform which Roger activated the moment he was inside.

"Everyone is on board, go go go." Roger screamed into the radio when they materialized on the ship. "And get me a medic down here."

"I'm already done for Sir." The sergeant said as Roger tried to stop the bleeding from the sergeant's lower back. "Veva. She was right after all, she deserves this." With those words he tore of the golden strips of his suit and pressed them into Roger's hand. By the time the medics arrived he was already dead.

After leaving the sergeant with the medics Roger hurried to the bridge were the rest of the officers were waiting.

"Congratulations Veva." Roger said and handed her the strips. "You've earned a field promotion."

"Thank you Sir." Veva said as she took the strips from his hand.

"Don't thank me, thank James he bet his rank on you failing, sadly he lost not only the bet but also his life." Roger said. "But we can mourn him and the others later. For now we should head for a safe location."

"Yes sir. We have put in a course to the supergate." One of the lieutenants said. "Dax thinks that he might be able to dial it."

"Sounds reasonable enough." Rogers said. "Do you know were I can find him?"

"He's down inspecting the power core." Veva said.

"Good, I need to talk to him." Roger said as he begun to walk out of the room, but turned in the doorway. "Try to see if you can get one of the engineers to tune the ship to our frequencies."

Just like Veva had said Rogers found Dax down by the power core.

"Hey, did you get me that list?" Roger asked as he stepped into the walkway.

"Yes, but I can't say for sure what works and what won't." Dax said. "Whatever that white light was it contained energy, at least enough to burn out any electrical equipment which wasn't shielded when it happened, but the energy shields themselves took quite a beating too, even the shield of this ship is severely diminished compared to normal values."

"So that's why some people got stuck in their armour?" Roger asked.

"Yes their shields must have been down when it happened." Dax said. "But as long as that white light doesn't return we should be fine with what we have."

"Good that's all I wanted to know." Roger said. "Now I need you to do something for me."

"Anything Sir." Dax said.

"I need you to connect me to the sensor network the Nightdiver placed." Roger said. "It should only transmit to the Nightdiver normally, but I'm sure you or one of your science division friends can fix that for me."

"Absolutely Sir." Dax said. "But it will take us at least a day or two to do that."

"We don't have a day, we'll be at the supergate in a few hours." Roger said.

"I'll see what I can do." Dax said as he pushed his way past Roger and ran of to gather a group to solve the problem.

When Dax was out of the room Roger walked up to the power core and looked at it for a few minutes, just taking in the beauty, before he left to see how things were with the rest of the crew. To his surprise Roger found them to be in a good mood, they had after all only been away from the fleet for less than a day, some even questioned his orders to retreat to the ship, but before he himself had time to doubt his decision Dax sought him out.

"Report." Roger ordered when he had dragged Dax with him to the bridge and the other officers.

"Well you're in luck." Dax said. "One of the guys worked on the sensor probes and have plugged us in."

"Show it on the screen." Roger ordered.

"It'll just be a minute to interface our technology with the Ori's." Dax said as he opened a panel and begun to place wires. "That goes there... that there... and lastly that there." With those words the forward view screen turned from the sight of hyperspace to a top view map of the galaxy. "Well as you can see we seem to have lost much of the network, but there are no sign of the fleet, or any other ship moving at all for that matter. But as you can see from the green dots there are at least a few suits out there transmitting their identification."

"Set a course for the closest group we'll pick them up if we can." Roger said. "And see if you can somehow determine which suits still have living people inside."

"That'll be no problem, there's plenty of diagnostics I can run for that." Dax said and pressed a few buttons which sent a signal to the sensor network which relayed the signal and the order contained within to every suit in the galaxy. "It might take a minute or two for the diagnostic to run."

"We're waiting." Roger said as the minutes ticked by.

"There we go." Dax said as the dots on the screen changed color. "Look like there's only a single group of survivors."

"That can't be Dax run it again." Roger ordered.

"There's nothing wrong with it Sir." Dax said. "Look, the sensors are only working in a fraction of the galaxy, there must be hundreds of soldiers still out there which we simply can't see on the sensors."

"So what we can't located them?" Roger said.

"Sorry sir." Dax said. "My suggestion is that we pick up those we can and return to Earth for new orders."

"I agree with Dax sir." One of the lieutenants said.

"So do I." Veva said and the rest of the officers nodded in agreement behind her.

"Well then, lets go get that group then before we make our way to Earth." Roger said.

"We should hurry, I can't say for sure, but I think they're in a hostile environment." Dax said. "Their values are decreasing as we speak."

"We can be there in half an hour." Veva said.

"Good, you have the bridge Veva, it's your capture after all." Roger said as he left the room and turned in the doorway. "I'll be leading the rescue mission myself, but I want one of you ready to drop a ring platform for us if we need it."

From the bridge Rodger hurried to gather up a group of soldiers for the rescue mission and managed to gather them at one of the rings just before they dropped out of hyperspace.

"Veva, talk to me." Roger said into the radio. "What have we got?"

"Looks like a group of Ori four motherships the fleet incapacitated, but they seems to have lost power afterwards." Veva reported. "Looks like they have spread out across the ships and if we're reading the sensors correct there are no other life signs on board any of the ships."

"Send out a message telling them that we're coming over." Roger said and turned to the group. "We're splinting up in four groups with each clearing a single ship and bringing back all personnel on board." Then he stepped into the rings with his group and ringed out.

On the other ship they ringed into an empty room, so they spread out around the rings.

"Any response from the ship we're on Veva?" Roger asked over the radio.

"Yes, they're on their way to you right now." Veva answered.

"Good." Roger said and turned to his men. "I want you to search the ship for anything of use to us, since this might be the last time we get the chance to resupply if we fail to dial the gate."

As he watched his men move out Roger took up a position on one side of the rings while he ordered one of the men to take the other side. Then he waited and a few minutes later he saw one of the soldiers coming around the corner at the far end of a corridor.

"Identify yourself." Roger ordered as the man approached the two.

"Private Harvey Howes, Fighter division." The man said as he approached. "How about yourself?"

"Major Rogers Knight, Infantry division." Roger said.

"Pleasure to meet you Major." Harvey said and turned around and shouted back down the corridor. "You can come out guys." In response a group of soldiers came around the corner and joined them.

"I suggest you take you get on our ship men." Roger said as they ran past him and into the rings which activated.

About fifteen minutes later as the oxygen levels reached dangerously low levels the first of the soldiers returned from scavenging with a bundle of staffs on one shoulder and a bag thrown over his other.

"What have you got there?" Roger asked as the man approached the rings.

"I found a shielded armoury with working staff weapons and even a Prior staff." The soldier said. "But I haven't managed to test the Prior staff. And in the bag I've got some Ori stunners."

"What use would that be to us?" Roger asked skeptically.

"Oh, sorry. Private Charlie Sudworth, Science division. I thought we might be able to fix our PP-90s with parts from these."

"Good thinking Charlie." Roger said. "Return to the ship."

"Yes Sir." Charlie said before he ringed back to their ship.

A minute after that, when their suits had sealed themselves and were using its power to keep the soldiers alive, a majority of the soldiers returned with massive sacks either thrown over their shoulders or dragging behind them.

"Might I ask what you have there?" Roger said as they approached.

"Food Sir." The closest one responded. "We though the mess wouldn't need it's supplies any more."

"Good, board the ship." Roger ordered.

"Yes Sir." The soldier said and got into the rings with his loot, closely followed by the rest.

Last of all came three soldiers dragging what had once been the central power core of the ship, now depleted, and in their belts a large amount of small bags were hanging.

"Anything to declare to customs?" Roger asked as the men approached.

"The power core of the ship for study and parts if needed." One of them said. "And some control crystals and other spare parts for our use on the ship."

"Good, lets hurry up back to the ship." Roger said and help the trio with the power core. "We don't want to waste our energy more than we have to."

Once back on the ship Roger helped remove the power core from the rings so the next group from one of the other ships could return, then he moved of to the bridge were most of the officers were trying to manage the newly arrived and all of the equipment that had been scavenged while Veva and another officer was plotting a new course to the supergate while also keeping count of who was yet to return. Just as Roger was arriving the last soldier ringed aboard and Veva activated the hyperdrive as soon as he was on board.

"Dax." Roger shouted at the man lying halfway inside one of the side consoles. "What are you doing in there? The ship is fine as it is, don't mess around with it."

"Sorry Sir." Dax said as he came crawling out. "I was just trying to unlock the control chair for the lady so she wouldn't have to control the ship with commands sent from a computer."

"Do you have any idea what you're doing Dax?" Roger said just as the power disappeared from the bridge and the ship dropped out of hyperspace. "Dax, what did you do now?"

"Sorry Sir." Dax said as the power returned three seconds later. "But I needed to bypass part of the control system. Veva, please try the chair."

"This better work Dax." Veva said as she sat down in the chair and the ship lunged forward again. "Good work Dax. I think I have full access to all the ships systems."

"Told you so." Dax said as he got out from under the console and reattached the panel on the front.

"Good work Dax." Roger said before turning to Veva. "How long until we reach the supergate?"

"Two hours at the most." Veva said.

"Good." Roger said. "I guess we can only wait then."

Almost half an hour before their anticipated arrival the ship dropped out of hyperspace, but there were nothing outside the view port.

"Don't tell me that we have lost the gate to?" Roger shouted.

"Seems like it." Dax said. "I mean it should be here but it's not, give me a minute."

"Look Sir, we're here." Veva said and brought up a map on the screen which showed the galaxy and indicated both the ships and the gates location. "And the gate is here too."

"That's not were we are Veva." Dax said and superimposed another map on the screen. "We're here, almost two degrees from the gate."

"So we have two different maps." Roger said. "Which is right?"

"Well the one I have is from the sensor network showing real time information." Dax said.

"And I have the one which is from the ships navigational computer." Veva said from the chair.

"Take us to the secondary gate site then, lets see who is right." Roger ordered.

"Yes Sir." Veva said as she swung around the ship and sent it into hyperspace.

About an hour later the once again dropped out of hyperspace, this time with the supergate in sight.

"Well looks like you were right Dax." Roger said. "Now dial it up and go through so we can get home."

"Yes Sir." Veva said as she ran Dax's dialing program and the gate activated. Once the gate was active the ship moved forward into the gate.

On the other side of the gate the ship stopped as they tried to make contact with the SGC through subspace, but after half an hour they gave up and Roger ordered the ship to jump to Earth. When they finally arrived they got the shock of their life. From their place just beyond Jupiter they could see huge amounts of debris flying around in the system and in the wake of both Earth and Mars came tails of debris, almost creating another asteroid belt.

"Approach Earth slowly." Roger ordered after a few minutes when he and most of the bridge crew had recovered from the shock.

"Yes Sir." Veva said after some hesitation.

"That's the next generation armour." Dax said as they flew past something which could have been part of a 304 bridge. "They're not supposed to even be a prototype yet."

"I can see at least four more over there." Veva said and pulled up four rings on the screen to indicate their location. "Clearly they're more than prototypes."

"Don't focus on what you can see and what you shouldn't see." Roger ordered as he saw several bodies float by without armours.

"Yes Sir." Dax said right before Veva increased their speed so that they arrived in orbit above Earth in a matter of minutes.

"Come in SGC, this is Major Roger Knight." Roger said after they opened a channel. "We are requesting permission to land."

"Sir. I'm not reading any human life signs on the planet." One of the lieutenants said. "But there's plenty of animal life signs all over the planet."

"Lieutenant, preform a deep scan of the last know location of Atlantis and Atlantia." Roger ordered.

"They seem to both be down there, but in a really bad shape." The lieutenant said. "No human life signs detected inside either but plenty of animals inside. It could be that it's flooded."

"Veva take us down into the atmosphere." Roger ordered. "Lieutenants, I want you two to get down there, take some men who have plenty of energy left in their suits, I don't want you drowning down there."

"Yes Sir." The two said as they hurried away to find the men they needed.

"Take over the sensors Dax, give me something to work with." Roger ordered.

"Well there's no energy signatures that I can see or any signs of humans on Earth at all." Dax said after looking through the data. "But from what I can see from the data when we approached Earth the supergate should work if we need it to. Other than that I don't know what to tell you."

"Start with a deep scan of the entire planet, piece by piece. All prof of human civilization can't disappeared during the night." Roger ordered. "Veva, you're in charge. The SGC still uses Cheyenne Mountain as a backup facility, there might be something there to indicate were everyone is, I'm going to check it out."

"Sir. As Dax said, there's no sign of any human civilization." Veva said.

"The facility should be shielded against even the sensors of Atlantis." Roger said. "I'll take a fighter and a ring platform so you can send me some backup once I'm there."

"Yes Sir." Veva said with some hesitation as he left.

From the bridge of the ship Roger made his way were he took a fighter which had a platform already attached to it and left the ship inside of it. Then he made his way to Cheyenne Mountain with it. Several hours later he dropped the platform and landed the fighter just outside the front door, or at least were he thought it would be there but all he saw was grass and large plains.

"I'm on site. You can begin to send through troops for a sweep of the facility." Roger said into his radio while he climbed out of the fighter.

"They'll be with you shortly." A voice came back.

"Good. Any news from the other away team?" Roger said as he approached the door.

"They have touched down on the outside of the city and are currently trying to find a way inside without flooding the entire city." The voice replied.

"Good." Roger said as the first group of soldiers arrived using the rings. "Now maintain radio silence until further notice." With those words he signaled for the newly arrived soldiers to follow him.

When all the soldiers had arrived Roger lead them up to the area were the front gate would be and after clearing away some plants and vines they managed to get through into the entrance tunnel, but instead of the cement and asphalt tunnel he was used to but instead it was the grey blue colors usually found on Atlantis or in other Ancient structures. But it had been long since he was there so he ignored it and moved on into the facility with his suits lights turned on, as they got deeper and deeper into the facility they didn't see a single sign of anyone having been there, but when they finally did, just a few levels above the gate room, it was in the form of scorch marks and bullet holes. Upon seeing the signs of battle they skipped the rest of the levels and hurried down to the twenty-eighth level were the gate room and much of the former heart of the SGC was located.

"Spread out and search this level for any information about what have happened before moving upwards." Roger ordered and ran of towards the control room, as he passed a junction he saw one of their armours lying in the ground and when he got to the control room he found more lying around, some with scorch marks and some which had cracks running around them. As he looked a bit closer at one of the scorch marks he saw he realized that he saw a skeleton through the plates.

"Men, how long would it take for a human corpse to become a skeleton?" Roger asked into the radio, no longer concerned about radio silence.

"Anything from a few months to a couple of years." A voice responded. "But with a climate like it's down here I'd say around ten months, a year tops."

"Check all armours you find for skeletons." Roger ordered over the radio while he himself removed the helmets of all six soldiers in the stairs, all revealing skeletons beneath.

"We have at least a dozen skeletons who's been killed in action near the self-destruct plus another five inside the room itself with two laying over the controls with their keys inside and turned." A voice reported over the radio.

"Plenty of skeletons on twenty-six too." Another reported shortly after as Roger was trying to start up the consoles in the control room, without success.

"I need a technician to see if they can get the consoles working in the control room." Roger said as he moved on to the briefing room and then to the general's office. There he went straight for the file cabinet in the far right corner, but when he reached it he failed to open it simply because it was locked and a sticker on the front informed him that everything inside would be incinerated should he use force on it.

It was when he looked around for the key that he saw the armour which was leaning against the chair with most of the body hidden under the wooden desk. After a quick search he found the key in a tight grip in the man's hand and in the other hand a traditional pistol, both of which he took before returning to the cabinet to search through the files inside as he could hear a technician cursing the console in the control room.

After a few minutes of searching through the cabinet he only managed to find files from before the SGC moved to Atlantis and so he gave up and returned to the control room were another technician had arrived to lend a hand.

"What have you got here?" Roger asked.

"Nothing Sir." The first answered. "It seems that the console lacks the power it needs."

"I just arrived with the power source of an Ori staff." The second said and held out a miniature of the mothership power core. "With any luck we can get it up and running long enough to diagnose the power issue."

"Good thinking." Roger said. "Radio me as soon as you get it working and then start a diagnose of the gate. I want it operational if at all possible."

"Yes Sir." The two said as Roger got out of the room.

"Come in Major." A voice was heard over the radio as Roger was looking through the general's quarters.

"This is Major Roger Knights over." He replied.

"Sir we have some problems." The voice replied. "A member of the other away team has gotten stuck under some debris and her suit is leaking oxygen faster than it can replenish it."

"Then get her out of there." Roger said.

"We can't Sir. If we move the debris the water pressure will cause large parts of the city cave in." The voice replied.

"Then raise it, that way the pressure will disappear." Roger ordered as he thought back to a lecture McKay had held about emergency measures on Atlantis. "The city is inherently buoyant so we wouldn't need power to do it either."

"Won't releasing the clamps holding it in place require power Sir?" The voice asked.

"If anyone of them is from the assault team they should be carrying breaching charges." Roger said. "If they use them on the clamps the city should rise to the surface by itself, just make sure to stay clear of it with the ship so the city doesn't crash into you."

"Yes Sir." The voice said and then there was a pause for a few seconds. "The team is moving to set the charges now."

"Good, I'll return to the ship as soon as I can." Roger said.

"Yes Sir." The voice said as Roger changed the radio to his men only.

"Listen up men." Roger said as he made his way into the staircase and begun the accent. "I'm returning to the ship to fix some things but should you need anything I will be on the radio."

As he made his way up through the staircase and out of the tunnel he could hear multiple confirmations the last of which came in a few seconds before he ringed back to the ship. Once he was on the ship he hurried back to the bridge just in time to see the first spire of Atlantis rising above the water.

"Any readings on the status of the woman." He asked as the city emerged.

"She's been holding her breath for the last hundred meters, she's lucky the suit still managed to maintain pressure on the way up." Dax reported from the console just as several of the central spires collapsed. "And luckily for the rest of the group they're on one of the piers and should be fine."

"Prepare a fighter and a platform so we can bring them back." Roger ordered and only seconds later the fighter deployed and dropped the platform before returning.

"Platform deployed." Dax reported as the fighter returned. "And away team one is returning from Atlantis in a minute."

"Good. Have another team go down to the East pier with a platform to secure it." Roger ordered. "I want them to clear and secure a large enough area for us to set up a base."

"Yes Sir." One of the corporals said and begun to bark orders into her radio.

"I'll be returning to Cheyenne Mountain to see if they have found something to explain what has happened." Roger said. "Meanwhile I want you to scan the rest of the solar system, there has to be something out there which works."

"Yes Sir." Veva said as she begun to move the ship upwards out of the atmosphere while Roger moved of the bridge.

The moment Roger returned to the mountain his radio begun to sound.

"Come in Major." One of the technicians voices came over the radio.

"This is Roger over." He said as he begun to make his way down through the base.

"Please come to the control room as soon as you can." The voice said.

"I'm on my way." Roger said as he skipped the stairs and instead dropped down the entire stairwell three floors at a time. Once on the right floor he hurried to the control room were the two technicians were sitting in front of the console which was now powered up and showing information on the screen separating them from the gate.

"What have you got for me?" Roger asked as he entered.

"Well take a look for yourself." The technician said and opened a file on the screen.

On the screen a man appeared, a long beard hanging from his face as well as large bags under his eyes.

"General's Log day four hundred and sixty-eight." The man said. "The enemy is still pressing down on our other sites and we have just received word that Atlantis has been lost. We fear that we the enemy well detect us soon and with the gate still out of function we will be shutting of the generators and cutting all contact with the rest of our forces in the hopes of hiding our presence. This is Jack O'Neill Commander of Cheyenne Mountain signing of."

Then the screen returned to showing tons of information.

"Have you managed to date the recording?" Roger asked slightly worried about who the man claimed to be.

"Yes, you won't like this one bit." One of them said. "It will be recorded in five years."

"Check it again." Roger said. "That can't be right."

"I've checked it over and over again Sir." The other said. "Both on the console and through my suit, it hasn't been recorded yet."

"So what are you saying?" Roger said skeptically. "That we've time traveled?"

"Yes Sir." The first technician said. "It's the only explanation I can think of that seems probable, either that or an alternate reality which is slightly ahead of us in time."

"That is a reasonable explanation to you?" Roger said. "That's the worst reasonable explanation I've heard in my life."

"There's been over fifteen recorded time travels as well as at least seven or eight different time lines and over twenty alternate realities were the SGC exist, it's almost certain that there's thousands of other realities too were the SGC exists." The first technician said.

"Very well then, smart asses." Roger said. "Figure out which it is then so we can return home."

"We'll do our best Sir." The first technician said.

"Now what about the gate? Can you get it to work?" Roger asked and looked out over it.

"Well there's nothing wrong with the gate as far as we can tell." The second technician said. "But it won't lock any address we try to dial."

"Are you using the console or a DHD?" Roger asked.

"The console, but it should work just like any DHD." The second technician said.

"Well I know that the SGC had problems when they didn't use a DHD in the beginning." Roger said with a sense of pride over coming up with something the eggheads couldn't. "It didn't compensate for the stellar movement or something like that."

"Well this is an Ancient console just like the one used on Atlantis so it should do perform just like a DHD." The first technician said.

"Designed by the Ancients yes, built by the Tau'ri most likely." Roger said. "Look, Atlantis has a huge amounts of systems there's no guarantee it does compensate by itself. Hell if this is an alternate reality they might not even know that you need to think about it over time. So check to see if it does or doesn't compensate."

"Major we've found something you might want to see." A voice came over the radio before any of the technicians had time to answer.

"Get going." Roger ordered the technicians before he turned around and begun to leave the room while talking into his radio. "This the Major over."

"Sir, please come to the twentieth level." The voice said.

"I'm on my way." Roger said and made his way there.

When he arrived he was faced with a large blast door and three of his men.

"What have you got for me?" Roger asked as he approached them.

"Well take a look for yourself, there's a crack in the wall over here." One of the soldiers said and lead him up to the crack.

When he leaned in he could see in through the crack and on the other side of the two meter thick wall he could see a large dark room which looked like it would belong in Atlantis or Destiny. Along the walls he could see holes which disappeared into darkness.

"Well this certainly looks interesting."Roger said as he pulled back from the wall and walked over to the other side of the door were the lock was placed. "Have you tried to open it?"

"Yes Sir." Another of the men said. "But it won't accept any identification we have."

"Then try to see if the dead have any identification you can use. They don't really have any use for them any more." Roger said as he begun to search one of the dead. "Or you could see if there's a manual for the door somewhere on the base, your call just get it open."

"Yes Sir." The soldiers said as the begun to search the rest of the corpses.

"Major, there's a transmission coming through from Atlantis." The voice of one of the technicians was heard over the radio while Roger and the soldiers were searching through all of the corpses in the base.

"Can you patch it through to the radio?" Roger asked as he pushed his hand down the throat of a skeleton.

"We can, but it will take us longer to do that than for you to get down here." The other technician said. "Or we could simply tell you what they want."

"Then tell me what they want and get started on getting a permanent connection established between our and their radio." Roger ordered as he heard one of the soldiers screaming in triumph while the huge door opened.

"Well they want to tell you that they've secured a large section of the pier along the water were they'll be setting up a base and they're preparing to send out teams to search through the rest of the pier." The technician said.

"Tell them to be careful and focus on the more important locations which could contain information about what happened." Roger said into the radio as he approached the doors with the soldiers falling in behind him. "Tell them to keep me in the loop on anything they find."

"Yes Sir." The technician said as Roger walked through the large door into the room beyond.

Inside the room he could see a hole in the floor which seemed to go down for several floors while the room itself seemed to be five floors high with a total of eight holes on each floor.

"Check for some kind of staircase to the rest of the holes." Roger ordered as he begun to inspect one of the lower holes.

When he had gotten about three meter into the tunnel his weakening outwards lights got reflected in something further ahead and when he got further in he could see the window that had created the reflection, at first glance he thought it to be some kind of isolation ward or prison but then the light fell on the console just inside the window and he realised that he was looking inside the front window of a jumper.

"Looks like we have at least one jumper here." Roger shouted to the rest as he got out of the hole. "Any luck finding a way to the higher holes?"

"Over here Sir." One of the soldiers said and waived from one of the tunnels. "Looks like there's a jumper missing from this one."

"Well then." Roger said as he walked through the hole into a staircase with steps going in both directions. "See if there's another way inside, I find it hard to believe the only way inside is if one jumper is removed and if anyone of them has power we could certainly use it so check that too."

"Yes Sir." The soldiers said as they split up with some most going upwards and some going down.

"Major come in." A voice came crackling over the radio. "This is the Atlantis away team over."

"This is the Major over." Roger answered.

"We where told you wanted to be kept in the loop on what happens here and we've found clear signs of a large scale battle inside the city." The voice said.

"Inside the city itself?" Roger asked skeptically.

"Yes it looks like an infantry battle." The voice said.

"Thank you." Roger said. "Tell the lieutenants that we have reason to believe that the white light may have transported us either through time or to an alternate reality and so I want them to have you searching for anything which may confirm or deny any of the theories."

"I'll be sure to mention that to them." The voice said.

"Good." Roger said as he heard one of his soldiers shouting for him to come. "Keep me in the loop."

"Yes Sir." The voice said as Roger made his way up the staircase.

A few levels up one of the soldiers were standing and waiting for him.

"Sir." The soldier said as Roger approached. "I think I've found a jumper which still have a decent amount of power in it."

"Good work soldier." Roger said as he stepped up to the rear of the jumper. "Lets see what you've found."

Inside the jumper Roger could see the lights turned on and some of the roof mounted panels hanging down and in the cockpit the front screen huge amounts of information scrolling by.

"Looks like you did it." Roger said as he turned around and left the jumper to see if there were more of them left with power. "Shut it down so we don't waste to much of the power which is left."

"Didn't think of that." The soldier said and was just about to step inside when the jumper went dark.

"Well we probably couldn't have used it with that little power either way." Roger said a bit disappointed. "See if there's any more."

"Yes Sir." The soldier said as he continued further up the stairs.

After a few hours they had searched through the rest of the jumpers without any sign of one with a functional power source or anything else on the base so Roger called of the search and ordered everyone to get topside and ring to to Atlantis for some much needed sleep.

As Roger himself ringed to Atlantis the two lieutenants were waiting for him.

"So what have you found here so far?" He asked as he begun to walk towards the closest tower were he saw the rest of the men going.

"We have found several armours without inhabitants." One of them said. "But no signs of any humans or any human activity. But after being submerged without a shield I guess we shouldn't expect to find any either."

"Are there any signs of danger or none human activities?" Roger asked as they entered the tower.

"Other than the risk of everything collapsing onto us we should be fairly safe on the pier." The other said.

"Good." Roger said. "The sun will be setting soon so to conserve what power we have left I think we should order all none essential personnel to get some sleep."

"I agree Sir." The other said. "We need all the power we have for exploring the city and the white light drained most of the armours far to much."

"So do I." The first said. "We should set up a schedule for when they should sleep and when they should be exploring the city."

"That might be bit much, but I get your point." Roger said. "Some of the engineers said they might use the power source from the Ori staffs, I think we should have at least some of them working on that. We might not get the power of a ZPM, but at the least we should be able to recharge some of the suits."

"A good idea sir, but I'd much rather have them working on a generator so we can have a sustainable energy source." The other said.

"Well that wouldn't hurt either, but I think we're a bit low on parts at the moment." Roger said. "But we'll let them decide which is the better choice."

"Yes Sir." The first said. "I'll make sure we have some guards posted during the night."

"Good." Roger said before the lieutenant walked away and he turned to the second. "Have we had any contact with the ship?"

"Yes, they're on their way back to Earth." The lieutenant answered. "But they couldn't find a single sign of human activity on Mars except for the changed orbit, the atmosphere isn't even breathable for any sustained time. Dax claimed that this strengthens the theory of an alternate reality since they most likely didn't have the time to fix the atmosphere there or build anything."

"Good. I want them to sleep as soon as they get here." Roger said. "They might have plenty of power on the ship but we shouldn't waste it either."

"I'll see to it that it's done, but in the end forcing the men to sleep will not solve anything." The lieutenant said.

"I know that already." Roger said as the lieutenant left and waited a few seconds before he added "And I'm already worried about it."

When he was alone Roger made his way up two stories and walked down the halls he was familiar about until he reached the quarters which were his in their own reality. When he found it it looked just like if it had been his own, completely empty except for the rock hard bed which had lost its softness and the console which sadly was both without power and badly damaged. Since it was just like his own quarters Roger his counterpart in this reality was just like him and spent most of his of time on the mainland with his wife.

But before he had time to think any further he yawned and suddenly the bed looked much more inviting than it had before, so he pushed aside all other thoughts and lay down. Barely had the back of his helmet hit the bed before he drifted of into the realm of dreams. But it wasn't a refreshing sleep and instead he woke up just as wet as if someone had thrown him into the ocean. Despite that he left the room to see what the day had to offer. What the day actually had to offer was a thunderstorm from hell but thankfully the grounding stations where doing what they should and channeled the energy into the water instead of into them, but it meant that the ship had left the atmosphere just to be on the safe side.

After grabbing some food from the dry rations they had raided from the Ori ships Roger in the makeshift mess he sought out Dax whom he'd been told had been looking for him and he found him sitting on the edge of the pier looking at the lightning which struck around the city.

"They told me that you where looking for me." Roger said as he sat down and begun to eat the dry bar.

"Yes, the lightning storm woke me up." Dax said as another blast hit the city and was channeled into the water bellow. "There's large amounts of power in every bolt you know."

"So why aren't you working on harnessing that power then?" Roger asked.

"Because of those grounding stations. As long as they work we can't take harness that energy and if they don't everyone in the city will get a lethal shock." Dax said. "We need another way of generating power."

"So what's our options then?" Roger asked. "Cause we need to have power soon, the suits are using up more than they should and we can't recharge them, then we have a number of jumpers in Cheyenne Mountain without power which would be a great help for us."

"We could try solar power, but days like this we won't get any power from them, we could do try to harness the waves, but it's to much work in my eyes, of course we could try wind power, it would probably work rather well here out on the ocean if the city itself wasn't stopping much of the wind in the area." Dax said. "Geothermal is another option but unlikely here on the ocean. We could build a nuclear reactor, but without proper materials and a uranium mine it's not safe nor probable that we can do it. So with the old generators out of the picture my personal choice would be a cold fusion generator, but sadly I'm not sure if any of us have the knowledge to build one. That leaves us with one last generator we could try to build, a Naquadah generator of even the simplest design would be able to provide enough power to at least load our suits over time and we have at two of the engineers who worked on the Mark IX so if they can recreate one of them we should have plenty of power, the only problem would be to find Naquadah but there should be large quantities of it in the self-destruct in Cheyenne Mountain. If we're lucky we might even stumble upon one in some part of the city."

"So you think we should simply keep exploring the city while also disassembling the self-destruct of Cheyenne Mountain?" Roger asked.

"Yes that's pretty much it." Dax said.

"Well what about the Ori staffs?" Roger asked. "One of the engineers thought we could use their power sources to recharge our own gear, the Ori power core for that part, you're telling me we can't use any of them? Or to maybe put a cable between the ship and the city?"

"We could give it a try, but to create an adapter between two separate species technologies isn't as easy as he or she would have you believe." Dax said.

"The engineers who powered up the console in Cheyenne Mountain managed to do it in a really short time." Roger said. "You might want to talk to them."

"I guess I should do that and if they did it that fast then there's a good chance that it's inherently compatible." Dax said. "You know if the highest ranking in the science division now. So I'm pretty much in charge of ever scientist and engineer we have."

"So I take it you're not used to leading then?" Roger said as he heard the worry in Dax voice.

"No, I'm not." Dax said.

"Don't worry you just focus on getting us power and solving any problem we face and I'll make sure that we all get out of this alive." Roger said.

"Thank you Sir." Dax said.

"Call me Roger." He said as he got up from the edge with the lightning bolts still hitting the city. "But lets get started, I need see about were to send exploration teams in the city and you need to get started on the self-destruct and the generator."

"Well then Roger I'll see to it that we have a few generators up and running as soon as I can with materials taken from the self-destruct, we might even be able to use it as it is to generate some power if we remove the part which causes it to go into overload." Dax said as he too got up from the edge. "But I think we should have Veva and the ship on the lookout for more Naquadah or broken generators which we might be able to fix."

"Sorry but I need Veva to return to the Ori galaxy as soon as possible to pick up any other survivors they can find." Roger said as the two returned to the tower.

"She can still keep an eye out for both of those things on her way and if it's as easy as your friendly engineer thinks they might as well bring back any power cores from Ori ships, working or not." Dax said.

"I'll tell her to do that then." Roger said as he parted ways with Dax and went to what he thought had looked like a command central the night before. And sure enough he found the lieutenants and some logistic personnel rescued from the Ori ships standing around a crude map of Atlantis drawn on the floor.

"Major." One of the lieutenants said as he saw him entering the room. "We're just planing were to send the exploration teams Sir."

"Good, show me what you've gotten so far." Roger said as he joined the circle around the map.

"The first away team which was sent reported that the central tower seems to be largely intact, even if there were plenty of bodies lying around with large amounts of burns and bullet holes around them. So we thought we'd try to clear a path to it so that we can see if the ZPMs simply have been removed or if they've run dry." One of the logistic personnel said while another pointed with a metal rob on the map. "Meanwhile we'll be sending out people to secure the rest of the pier while the engineers begin repairs on the city."

"Good thinking." Roger said. "But I've ordered Dax and the engineers to focus their efforts on building us a few Naquadah generators as well as on Cheyenne Mountain since they believe that there is a large quantity of Naquadah inside the self-destruct which we could use in the generators."

"But we don't have enough personnel to man Cheyenne Mountain while sending out patrols both on the pier and to the central tower." Another of the logistic personnel complained.

"But we don't need to man the entire base, we would only need to post men at the entrances to the levels they will be working on, no more than five soldiers in total." Roger said. "Then we should still have enough people to both send patrols to the control tower and the pier while Veva returns for more survivors."

"I have to advise against sending Veva back to the Ori galaxy." One of the lieutenants said. "At least not before she searches through all of the debris floating around in the system, there has to be something we can salvage out there."

"A fair point Lieutenant, but our first priority has to be to find and rescue as many survivors as we can." Roger said. "But the fighters on the Ori ships shouldn't be needed on their mission and instead they could be used to search the debris."

"They would do just fine, I will personally be leading the sweep of the debris, with your permission." The same lieutenant said. "I'll have Dax give me a list of needed materials and parts before we take of."

"Great." Roger said and looked at the other lieutenant. "I take it you will be leading the exploration team then?"

"Yes Sir. That was the plan." The lieutenant said.

"Then keep a lookout for anything we can use not just power sources, even if that's our first priority, and then call them in so we can send someone to pick it up while you press on." Roger said. "It's great if we can find something which works but you need to reach the control tower in time to get back before it gets dark, because we don't know what might come out at night and we don't want you burning more energy than needed."

"As you say Sir." The lieutenant said.

"Good, I will personally be patrolling the perimeter and helping the men set up some better protection." Roger said. "Dismissed."

With those words Roger left the room closely followed by both of the lieutenants who quickly ran of to prepare and perform their respective tasks while Roger went on a quest to find the long range communicator to reach Veva and the ship, a quest which brought him back to the same room he had just left.

"Veva, do you copy?" He said into the radio when he'd hooked up to the long range communicator.

"This is Veva over." Her voice came back.

"I've got some new orders for you." Roger said. "You're to hand over all fighters the lieutenant needs, but keep at least one, they will be sweeping the debris field in the fighters while you return through the supergate to look for more survivors. Dax also wants you to keep an eye out for any Naquadah or Ori power core you come across, working or not."

"We'll keep our eyes open for anything like that." She said. "But why not give them all of the fighters?"

"You might need one to land rings on a planet." Roger said.

"I understand Sir." She said.

"Good. I expect you back in three days for a status report." Roger said.

"We will leave as soon as the fighters have been picked up and we will return in no more than three days." She said before Roger shut of the long range communicator and made his way to the perimeter.

Along the perimeter the soldiers had put up a small barricade around a meter high made from whatever they had found lying around so Roger gave them a hand in strengthening it and adding towers while also ordering all entrances from bellow to be sealed. Doing this work he spent most of his day, sporadically hearing a call from the lieutenants exploration team who called in something of use after which Roger would send a couple of men to retrieve it. And further into the camp he could hear the soldiers and engineer working at Cheyenne Mountain ringing back to either get more tools or to bring back something of use they had found.

As the sun begun to set he could see the lieutenants exploration team coming topside outside the barricade only a few minutes before the other lieutenant returned with his eight fighters which all carried quite a large amount of debris. Then the corporal who would be in charge of the night watch relieved him so he left his post to meet with the two lieutenants in the command central.

"I want a report about what you've found." Roger said as the three entered the room and joined the logistical personnel already there. "Fighter squadron first."

"Nothing to be confirmed yet." The lieutenant said. "We need some of the engineers to look at it first. But we might have found several smaller energy sources, nothing mayor according to the sensors, but they might be enough to power the lights in this tower and along the barricade if we connect a few hundred of they, one by one they should power our suits lights and nothing else."

"Sounds like you might have found a treasure up in the sky." Roger said. "Now what have the exploration team found?"

"Well we're making progress towards the tower, a large section of the pier closest to the tower has collapsed but we're looking for a way around it, otherwise we'll have the fighter squadron deploy a ring platform for us." The other lieutenant said. "In terms of loot we got at least two Naquadah generators which should work if we only add some Naquadah to them. We also found some lab equipment and medical equipment, but we need power for any of that to work."

"Good work both of you, with the power sources from the debris it should be easier for the exploration team to get to their objective." Roger said. "And with some Naquadah from Cheyenne Mountain those reactors could give us some systems to work with."

"Is no one going to ask what we have for you?" Dax said as he entered the room.

"Didn't know you would have some results for us already Dax." Roger said. "But please tell me what you've got for us."

"Well we've followed up on using the power source from the Ori staffs to power something." Dax said. "And as long as the equipment doesn't require to much power, like our armour it should run on it for at least a few hours."

"That's great news Dax." Roger said, quite amassed at how fast he had done what was asked.

"Yes, it was actually rather easy, the Ancients and the Ori seems to have used the same power configurations and power plugs, so to say, so it works by just plugging it in." Dax said. "We hope that something similar might be possible with ZPMs and the Ori power cores but we've yet to find an output on the power core which we can use."

"You'll find it soon Dax." Roger said. "Any luck with the self-destruct?"

"Yes we've begun to disassemble it, but it will take us a few more days to get by all the security which is built specifically to stop anyone from taking it apart in a hurry." Dax said.

"Great work from you and your crew Dax." Roger said. "I hope you can spare a few engineers tomorrow who can check the Naquadah generators and take a look at the small power source that the fighter squadron found."

"Sure, I can have the ones who worked on testing Ori power in Ancient equipment do that." Dax said.

"Great." Roger said. "If there's nothing else I suggest we all get a good nights sleep and rise with the sun to get the most out of the day tomorrow."

When no one said anything more Roger left the room and made his way to his own room several stories above.

**THE END**

So it's a start of a brand new story which I hope will grow into something great, hopefully even better than its parent story Stargate The Million Years War.

Give me some love or hate, but mostly love since hate will be ignored.


	2. Chapter 2

As Roger woke up he felt more relaxed than he had done for a long time, sure they were stuck in either in another time or in another dimension, but at least his superiors weren't there to see it and without a proper clock he had managed to get almost twelve hours of sleep. But it came at a price in the form of a short line of people outside his door.

"You should just have awoken me." Roger said as he walked down the corridor with the people forming up behind him.

"We didn't think you'd mind the sleep." Dax said as he pulled out a datapad. "As you can see on this we've managed to get some power. The small power sources the fighters brought back were most likely mounted in emergency lights or as backup power for other minor systems."

"So how long would these last?" Roger asked as they reached the end of the corridor.

"A day or two in one of these and several weeks or months in lights depending on how much light you want." Dax said.

"So do we have enough to light up this tower and the perimeter?" Roger asked.

"No, but the fighter squadron have just left to search for more." Dax said. "But for now we can get some lights around the perimeter as well as power to the most needed equipment, such as this and a few other datapads."

"So how are we doing with the generators?" Roger asked.

"We're still working on getting us some Naquadah which we can use." Dax said. "But we'll get there, hopefully we'll have managed to get us the Naquadah we need within the next two or three days.

"Good, get back to it if there's nothing else." Roger said.

"I'll get back to it right away." Dax said just as they reached the bottom of the tower and he ran away.

"Now what did the rest of you want?" Roger asked the rest of the people.

"I was sent to inform you that Veva's ship has arrived in the Ori galaxy and they have begun their search for any more survivors." One of the soldiers said before walking of.

"And I to tell you that both Lieutenants have resumed their tasks." Another said and left with two of the others.

"The corporal in charge of the night watch sent me to report that they've heard strange noises during the night." A third said before walking away.

"And what about you then?" Roger asked as the last of the soldiers just kept following him without a word.

"Well.. uh.. I'm just following the rest of the soldiers Sir." He said. "I don't really know what to do around here, all of my superiors are dead, so I don't really know were my place is."

"Well then, I've got an excellent task for you." Roger said after some thinking. "You saw the datapad that Dax had?"

"Yes I saw it." The soldier said.

"Good, go to the command central and tell the logistic staff to give you one then come find me at the perimeter." Roger said. "And tell them that I want all future updates on that datapad."

"Will do Sir." The soldier said as he ran of to get the datapad for Roger.

About half an hour later, while Roger was looking out over the wall from one of the towers, the soldier came up to him and handed him the datapad.

"Thank you." Roger said as he took it.

"They're saying that before they have proper power you'll have to walk by the command central to download the update." The soldier said. "Something about the datapads not supporting subspace networks."

"To bad." Roger said.

"Because the logistical staff doesn't have access to any real maps of Atlantis that's accurate they've slaved the sensors of all armours so that they'll send the information they collect to the armour of their superiors armours." The soldier said as he showed Roger the function. "So basically they draw a new map of Atlantis as we explore it. They did however use parts of the Colonel's armour to do it, since his armour will receive even from you."

"Well he doesn't really have any use for it now does he?" Roger said. "We might as well scavenge what we can from it."

"I guess you could look at it that way Sir." The soldier said.

"We might have been lost for a few days, but from the looks of it we'll be here for many more." Roger said. "We might as well settle down and act like it already."

"Yes Sir." The soldier said.

"Now what division are you from?" Roger asked in an attempt to figure out what to do with him next.

"I don't really have a division Sir." The soldier said. "I've worked as a military software specialist before joining the air force when I realized that I could fly the planes too, not just program them, then later the SGC. But when I joined the SGC both the science division and the fighter division wanted me on board."

"So military software and fighters." Roger said. "Well for now Dax will have the most use for you. Take the rings to Cheyenne Mountain and find him there."

"Yes Sir." The soldier said and ran of towards the rings, happy to have a task.

After the soldier had left Roger settled down in the tower, the thunderstorm had passed but with the rain still coming down he knew it would be a long day.

Several hours later the night watch corporal came and relieved him. The moment he did so Roger hurried away from the perimeter to the tower, not bothering to stop at the command central but instead heading straight to bed. The armour was designed to protect him from even the cold of space, but now it had let through the cold and wet of rain so he ordered it to deactivate and without a hitch it folded together into the cube form used for storage if a locker wasn't available. Then he lay down on the bed and pulled up a thermal blanket around him.

After a few rather dull days later just as the night came the rain stopped and when he woke up the next morning Roger was looking forward to seeing the city without the constant rain. Sadly however the armour had run out of power the night before while it was deactivating, so it was stuck in a half open position at the end of the bed. This meant he had to leave his room in nothing but his black jumpsuit, which really wasn't meant for outdoor use without the armour, but as he reached the command central he saw that several of the men and women hadn't gotten their armour on, including Dax who where manually removing an armour from one in the staff.

"Morning Dax." Roger said. "I see that we've lost power to several armours today."

"Yes sadly I think we've lost more than just power." Dax said. "Depending on what the armours were doing while they lost power there's a good chance that we'll have to reconstruct the entire armour before it will work again."

"So basically we might as well just build a new armour?" Roger asked.

"Sadly yes." Dax said as he removed the last of the armour from the man who immediately got back to work.

"So how many armours have we got that's still working?" Roger said as he uploaded the days report to his datapad.

"Well the last soldiers who had enough power for the day where sent out to search through the last of the pier before they set up a perimeter at that end of the pier, that way the rest of the soldiers will be able to search through every room of the pier in detail without having to worry to much." Dax said. "But to answer your question there's twenty men still having working armours with an unknown number of armours having lost power without a chance of recharging them."

"So I take it that the lieutenant have given up on reaching the central tower?" Roger said.

"No, but from the looks of it there's absolutely no way inside from this pier." Dax said. "But he's still refusing to let us drop them in with a fighter and a set of rings, simply because he fears and ambush."

"Well then I'll give him until the end of the day before I'll do it myself." Roger said. "How's the generators going by the way? You've been promising me power for the last few days."

"Since we got emergency power back online we've managed to speed up our work simply by working in the night." Dax said. "We're installing the Naquadah as we speak but we'll only have the two generators we found first working to begin with. The ones found yesterday are far more advanced than what we're used to, so they're also locked down with access codes, which we do not have."

"You think we could charge the jumpers with one of the generators?" Roger asked.

"Yes piece of cake." Dax said. "We could probably charge all of the jumpers in a few hours, at least give them enough power to get them here."

"Good. We could use the jumpers to land the Lieutenant in the central tower." Roger said.

"Of course, I'll see to it that we get as many jumpers working as we can." Dax said. "I assume the other generator should be moved here?"

"Of course, otherwise the soldiers wouldn't be to happy." Roger said.

"That's true." Dax said. "But I guess I need to get back to the jumpers to make sure we get them all working then."

"You really should." Roger said as Dax left the room.

After Dax had left the room Roger looked down at the datapad and begun to read through the information on his way to the mess. According to the report the fighter squadron had picked up plenty of the smaller power sources the day before plus a half working hyperdrive which they hoped could be repaired. They had also begun to pick up the black boxes of the destroyed ships but other than that they had found nothing of use. The search teams meanwhile had brought back several highly advanced Naquadah generators from a storage room which held many more, then they had also managed to complete most of the map of the pier. The egg heads reported that the self-destruct of Cheyenne Mountain had been dissembled and the Naquadag inside recovered for use in generators. At the bottom of the report was a notice that Veva had gotten her mission prolonged simply because the survivors were so spread out.

After reading through the report Roger headed to the perimeter were he spent a few hours patrolling it before he heard the rings activating and he headed back to it. When he arrived at the rings Dax and some of the engineers where waiting for him with a Naquadah generator.

"So it's working as it should?" Roger asked as he signed for them to follow him.

"Yes, we tried it on a jumper and it was charging it without any signs of problems." Dax said. "Now we only need to plug it in and we should have enough power to get the standard lights and the most basic equipment working."

"Good. Get it set up in the command central." Roger said. "And I take it the other generator is already charging the jumpers?"

"Yes the one we charged with this generator should have enough charge to make it back here soon." Dax said. "It might actually have enough power already but I'd give it some more time first."

"With that jumper we could drop of a search team directly into the central tower Dax." Roger said. "The sooner we get there the sooner we can find out what ha happened here."

"I'll have the guys prepare the jumper for take of then." Dax said.

"Don't bother, I need something to do too." Roger said as he stepped onto the ring platform and ringed away.

Once at the mountain Roger quickly descended down to the jumpers where he found several technicians working on the jumpers in the room.

"Dax told me you a jumper which should be able to make the trip back to Atlantis." Roger said as he approached a group of technicians.

"Yes it's the first one to your right when you enter the stairs." One of the technicians said and pointed at the hole without a jumper. "But I would wait for at least a few more hours to let it reach at least a few percent of full power. Otherwise you won't have access to all of the systems."

"I need it as soon as possible." Roger said. "Do you think that it will have the power to fly back too if I need it to?"

"If you wait another hour you should have enough power to go back and forth as well as a few laps around the city." The same technician said.

"Thank you." Roger said as he walked of into the hole and then up to the jumper.

In the jumper Roger sat down in the pilots seat and begun to run a full diagnostic on the jumper, after almost two hours the jumper had finished the diagnostic and the only thing which wasn't marked as green was the amount of drones which were zero, but Roger didn't need the drones so he piloted the jumper out of the hole into the shaft and the upwards, as he came close to the roof it begun to open just like the roof of Atlantis gate room. Once on the surface he turned the jumper in the right direction and gave it full power to complete the long journey as fast as possible.

"Atlantis command central come in." Roger said after opening a channel while he saw the city coming over the horizon.

"This is Atlantis command over." A voice replied.

"This is the Major." Roger said. "I need the last know location of the Lieutenant and the team heading for the central tower."

"Transmitting last know location." The voice said as a dot appeared on the front window.

"Thank you." Roger said as he adjusted his course enough so that he was now heading for the lieutenant.

After a minute he had pinpointed the last know location and with the help of the jumpers sensors he had managed to find their new location, slightly closer to the tower. As he approached their location he saw a gaping hole in the wall, seeing it as an entry point he backed up the jumper and opened the rear hatch before walking out of the jumper.

"Lieutenant." Roger shouted into the corridor.

"Major." A voice replied as the lieutenant and his men approached.

"Get the men aboard." Roger said. "We're going straight to the tower no matter how you feel about it."

"Yes Sir." The lieutenant said as he motioned to his men to climb aboard. "Can't say I like it, but by now I too think that it's the best and possibly only way inside."

"I'll do a scan of the tower after dropping you of so you'll have some advantage." Roger said as he got back in the pilots seat and waited for the last of the soldiers to board.

"Thank you Sir." The lieutenant said as they took of with him in the co-pilot's seat.

"Don't mention it." Roger said as they approached a balcony on the tower which was still intact.

"We'll go for the ZPM room first." The lieutenant said as they begun to unload the jumper. "See if there's any ZPMs there are if they've been removed."

"Get to the control room first Lieutenant. Dax gave this to me two days ago." Roger said as he pulled up a small crystal with a long cable attached and threw it to the lieutenant who was now outside the jumper. "It should give you enough power to check the status of the ZPMs without having to go down to the room itself."

"Remind me to buy the engineers a round of beer when we get home Sir." The lieutenant said as he looked at it.

"I'll be sure to remember that." Roger said before he took of with the shuttle and begun to scan the tower.

"Radio test one two one two." The lieutenant said over the radio.

"I read you loud and clear Lieutenant." Roger said as he watched the men move into the tower with the help of the sensors. "There should be a staircase to your right. Use that to get up to the gate room."

"If we're going to cheat by taking a jumper you could at least have thrown us out on the balcony behind the gate." The lieutenant said as he and his men begun the accent, taking four steps at a time.

"Sure I could have done that." Roger said as he flew around and begun to inspect a tear in the hull. "But then I would have needed to fix the balcony first, it's lying either at the bottom of the tower or the bottom of the ocean."

"Didn't think of that Sir." The lieutenant answered after almost a minute.

"No you didn't Lieutenant." Roger said as he marked down the tear as an impact with a large ship.

"We're approaching the target." The lieutenant said as they arrived in the control room. "No signs of any hostiles, only more dead soldiers."

"I'm getting some weird readings from the tower so stay on your guard." Roger said as the sensors went wild before shutting of.

"I think we've found what's doing that to your sensors." The lieutenant said as he came to see the stargate. "We have an active wormhole with a shield blocking all use of the gate."

"But we've detected no energy signatures coming from anywhere in the city." Roger said as he tried to reboot the sensors.

"From the looks of it there's cables coming through the gate as well as a cube which one of the cables goes into, could be a shield generator." The lieutenant said as the handed the energy crystal to one of the technicians in his team before he approached the gate. "From the looks of it I'd say it's an incoming wormhole."

"Keep an eye on it but focus on getting a reading on the ZPMs." Roger ordered as he managed to force the sensors to start again.

"We'll get those readings Sir." The lieutenant said as he signalled for two men to watch the gate while he returned to the technician who was powering up the consoles.

"I can confirm that it's an incoming wormhole and a shield generator." Roger said as he managed to get some readings on the gate. "Lets hurry up and hope nothing comes through the gate while you're there."

"We're working as fast as we can." The lieutenant said as he helped the technician by running around the consoles to press the needed buttons. "We have it, no ZPMs found."

"To bad." Roger said as he took the jumper close to the tower where the balcony behind the gate had been. "See if you can force open the door to the balcony so I can get you out of there."

"We'll check it out." The lieutenant said before ordering one of his men to open the door. "The technician says he wants to run some more diagnostics programs while we're here."

"Sorry but that's a negative." Roger said as he saw the door opening through the front window of the jumper. "As soon as we've secured the pier we'll come back and secure the tower."

"I agree it's the best way Sir." The lieutenant said as he pulled out the energy crystal from the console and then dragged the technician with him to the door were the rest of his team where getting into the jumper. "We're all aboard."

"And we're out of here." Roger said as he closed the rear hatch and flew away from the tower towards the pier.

"With that gate active I don't think we can secure the central tower." The lieutenant said as he came into the cockpit.

"No and from the readings I got of the cables which came through the gate the gate can stay active for an indefinite time." Roger said as they came in for landing on the pier. "We need to have the technicians take a look at that gate."

"My technician managed to conclude that it was an intergalactic wormhole before I pulled him from the console." The lieutenant said. "Most likely from Pegasus. Or at least that was the last incoming wormhole while the consoles were still working."

"Really? Then it could be a friendly wormhole." Roger said as they landed. "And as long as that shield is there nothing will be able to come through."

"So either the people on the other side won't come through or they'll lower the shield, which means we can cut the cables and maybe close the gate?" The lieutenant asked.

"Exactly." Roger said. "Lets hope they keep the shield up, for now."

"Yes Sir." The lieutenant said as they left the jumper. "Time to fill out the report."

"The logistic personnel will probably want it as soon as possible." Roger said as the two split ways.

A few minutes later he came into the command centre where Dax and some other engineers were running the final diagnostics on the Naquadah generator.

"Have you got it working yet Dax?" Roger said.

"Yes we have power on this level of the tower so far." Dax said as he turned a few dials both on the generator and a console. "But if you give us a few minutes we should have power in the entire tower."

"Then I'll just wait here then." Roger said as he sat down on a chair and waited.

"Oh just put pressure on us." Dax said as he directed the engineers a bit faster.

"Well both McKay and Samantha works better under pressure." Roger said. "You might do too."

"It's not only me Sir, it's the entire division." Dax said as the engineers sent power throughout the building. "But it seems to be working, we now have power in the entire tower. We also seem to have some power leaking into the rest of the pier."

"So how long will the generator last?" Roger asked.

"Well there's only so much equipment here in the tower which we use, mostly lights and some consoles here in this room." Dax said. "We should have power indefinite if we're talking about this tower only, a couple of months maybe a year if we spread out to the entire pier."

"And that's with only this one?" Roger asked as he came to think of the other one.

"Yes, but we have Naquadah to refill them both a few times so in truth we don't have to worry about power any more." Dax said.

"Good, start to charge the still functional suits as soon as you can, we can't have them breaking down too." Roger ordered.

"We're already setting up a charging station." Dax said. "But we still need some time to finish it."

"We don't have time Dax." Roger shouted. "We need those armours fully functional right now."

"And I said that we're working on it." Dax said. "Look, we need time to do things too, it won't happen in the blink of an eye."

"I know you're doing the best you can Dax, but it's not enough." Roger said. "We're sitting ducks here as it is."

"I agree but there's only so much we can do with what we have and the limited number of personnel who actually understands what we're doing." Dax said.

"With any luck Veva will have found plenty of soldiers, engineers and scientists." Roger said. "She should be back soon."

"I doubt it, there wasn't really that many from the science division on the mission." Dax said.

"Well do what you can." Roger said as he left the room and returned to the jumper which he then took back to Cheyenne Mountain so that it could get a full charge before he returned to Atlantis for some sleep.

The next morning he was awoken by one of the soldiers.

"What is it?" Roger said as he got out of the bed.

"Veva has just returned with the ship packed with a hundred more men." The soldier replied.

"Was it really necessary to wake me up just to tell me that?" Roger asked as he put on some clothes.

"There's more than that." The soldier said. "They came under attack of an unknown fleet."

"In the Ori galaxy?" Roger said as they left the room and headed towards the command centre.

"Yes but when they came through the supergate an identical fleet was awaiting them and they had to fight their way out." The soldier said. "Luckily the enemy seems to have far slower hyperdrives so they could outrun them in hyperspace."

"Have the newly arrived assigned rooms." Roger ordered and took of running.

"Yes Sir." Roger heard behind him as he ran as fast as he could.

Almost a minute later he came into the command centre heavily breathing.

"Morning Major." Veva said as she saw him. "You've run a marathon or something?"

"Very fun Veva." Roger said. "I'm just not used to running without the armour."

"I was going to ask about that." She said. "But I guess it ran out of power too, just like most of my crews did."

"Yes, I lost it a few days ago." Roger said. "But I see that you still have yours."

"Yea, but I'm running low, a few more hours and then it won't work any more." Veva said. "And Dax said that it will be another day before we can begin to charge them."

"An entire day?" Roger said in surprise. "By that time we won't have any armours left."

"Dax said the same. Only the few armours which were deactivate when they ran out of power will be usable." Veva said.

"Well we won't have any use for them as it is." Roger said. "I heard that you got attacked by a fleet in the Ori galaxy and here in the Milky Way at the supergate."

"More like an invasion force. We outran several of them, while we at the same time saw even more fleets in the outskirts of our sensors range." Veva said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones who took out Earth in this reality."

"But you said they were slower than the Ori ship?" Roger said. "You think we could get everyone on board and use it to flee?"

"Yes they're slow, but in the numbers we saw there's a good chance they'll be lying in wait for us to fly by and then attack us." Veva said. "But a battle with them would just end with us under siege, just like the Ancients and the Wraith. We need to get far away fast."

"We could do fast if we could get the wormhole drive to work and had enough power to use it." Roger said. "Worst case scenario we'll bring down the ship and use its power to raise the shield."

"That could work, but we would need to change it after some time and then we'd be sitting ducks." Veva said.

"I take it you've heard about the wormhole which is connected to the stargate by now?" Roger said. "We would have detected any activation of the gate even with the limited sensors we have right now."

"Yes I've heard about it." Veva said. "So it's been active for several days now which means there's a very potent energy source on the other side of the gate."

"Exactly." Roger said. "It might be just what we need to activate the shield and some other systems."

"Any source address?" Veva asked.

"We're thinking Pegasus, probably friendly." Roger said.

"The Tower?" Veva said.

"Maybe, there's only one way to know." Roger said. "Take the ship to the last know location of the Tower and see what you can find."

"I'll gather up the crew and leave in two hours then." Veva said. "Do you think we should use the gate?"

"I'd say it's your best bet if you want to get there any time soon." Roger said.

"Then we'll give it a go. If that doesn't work we go there through hyperspace." Veva said. "It shouldn't take us more than two weeks to get there and back, plus the search if it's not on the planet."

"Then go now." Roger ordered.

"Yes Sir." Veva said as she walked away.

After Veva had left Roger pulled out his datapad and begun to download the days report, which told him nothing new. So with that out of the way sought out Dax who was overseeing the construction of the charging station.

"Drop what you're doing Dax, we won't have any use for it." Roger ordered.

"We need to save the armours which still have power." Dax complained.

"First we need to save ourselves." Roger said. "As you know Veva was attacked and by now there's a good chance the attackers are heading here. We need the sensors, the shield and the hyperdrive or wormhole drive back online as soon as we can, in that order."

"Without a connection to the central tower we can't check the status of either and so far we've been unable to find any working connections." Dax said. "We could take a jumper to one of the other piers and see what we can find there."

"No we're going to the central tower Dax." Roger said. "We have secured the pier and the central tower should be our next objective. Coming to think of it we do have the portable shield generator and I bet you could change it so it projects the shield somewhere else, like around the gate."

"So we're using the shield to seal the gate?" Dax said and looked at the rest of the engineers. "We can do that."

"Great, it's still a bit early but as soon as the day shift have started I'll be here to pick up you, your team as well as the lieutenant and his team in two jumpers." Roger said. "But I guess we need a Naquadah generator to power up the central tower so we might as well bring over all of the jumpers."

"They should have enough power for a few days worth of flight time by now and we should be able to charge them at least a little while still having power here." Dax said.

"Good." Roger said. "Prepare your team, you can bring a jumper worth of men and equipment to set up the shield and check the systems."

"I only need half a jumper." Dax said as he watched Roger leave.

As the first light begun to shine on the top of the central tower Roger returned with all of the jumpers from Cheyenne Mountain together with anything of use to them and the Ori fighter and ring platform. As he came in for landing he could see both the lieutenant's and Dax's teams standing in wait for them.

"Dax what's that blue thing behind you?" Roger asked over the radio as he begun to land in front of them. "I could swear that it's a working Ori power core."

"Well I'm not sure about working, but we managed to give it a slight charge from the generator, or rather a quite large charge, we should be able to use it as a battery to power up the systems we need as well as the shield." Dax said. "It's surprisingly similar to how a ZPM works, but it also seems to be able to generate power in some way, but we haven't gotten that worked out yet."

"As long as it does what you need it to Dax you can bring it along." Roger said as he walked out of the jumper and meet up with Dax.

"It will do what we want it to." Dax said as he, Roger and the entire team had to use all their strength to get it on board without the help of their armours. "And with it we should be able to leave the second generator here so that the rest of my people can begin to run diagnostics on the rest of the pier."

"Good. There's quite a few interesting locations on this pier which would be useful to have working." Roger said as he entered the cockpit and sat down in the pilots seat.

"Well the outlay of the city isn't identical to what we're used to so you might not find what you expect on the pier." Dax said.

"I already know that Dax." Roger said as they took of and approached the central tower. "Take a closer look at the west pier and tell me what you see."

"Not what I expected to see." Dax said as he pulled up a better image on the front screen. "That looks almost like a small dry dock."

"That's what I think too." Roger said as he waited for the other jumper with the lieutenant's team inside to unload at the door to the former balcony outside the gate room. "There might be more beneath the top levels too."

"So I guess you want us to search that too while we're at it?" Dax asked as the other jumper moved away and they flew into position.

"No, we don't have a need for any industrial buildings at the moment." Roger said as they begun to unload the Ori power core. "But more important it means that other things might be found on other piers, such as the nanite creation machine, turns out it's not in the southern pier but in a room just beside the nanite lab."

"Before you even ask, no." Dax said as they rolled the egg shaped power core through the room. "It took Carter, McKay, Zelenka and the rest of us almost a year to write all the rules and restrictions for us to even consider using the nanites and then we've been adding more and more rules almost every day."

"But couldn't you use the programming from the naites which are already inside us?" Roger said as they pushed the power core over the top step of the stairs. "Like copy and paste?"

"No, we originally thought that they had only been damaged or run out of power." Dax said as he begun to pull out some cords and plug them into the consoles in the room. "But we have since then managed to scan and diagnose them further and there's only a dozen or so working nanites left in anyone and given the way they work their programming is incomplete, even if we took the nanites out of everyone and put them in a pile I doubt we'd have the entire programming. If you want cheap labour I suggest that we start taking slaves since there's a much greater chance of that working out in the long run, the same goes for soldiers."

"A simple no would have worked just as fine." Roger said with his disappointment hidden quite well. "We're not slavers, but that card's not of the table."

"Really?" Dax said as he begun his work on the console. "You're actually considering taking slaves?"

"Come on Dax I'm just messing with you." Roger said. "Now get to work."

"I'm already working Major." Dax said as he saw Roger walking of towards the staircase.

After leaving the control room together with another soldier Roger begun to search through the tower floor by floor for several hours.

"Major. This is Dax over." Dax's voice came over the radio. "We're done here the shield is set up and we have access to most systems, seems like we might be able to bring the sensors back online with just some minor repairs while the cities shield will take some more work, as will the stardrive, but thankfully it looks like we can repair both within a week thanks to some of the things Veva and her crew brought back from the Ori galaxy."

"Good." Roger said as he rounded a corner and came upon a large blast door which he knew was not suppose to be there. "So how soon until we can have the sensors working?"

"Just give me a minute." Dax said. "I have to divert power to the secondary power grid and make sure we don't power up every system in the city."

"Do you have any of your staff looking through the database?" Roger asked.

"Yes." Dax answered. "They're trying to piece together the history of this reality as we speak."

"See if they can find anything about a large blast door a few levels beneath the infirmary, I think this is were McKay's lab should be." Roger said as he searched for a way to open the door.

"I'll have them see what they can find." Dax said. "In the meantime I think you should get back up here."

"I'm on my way." Roger said as he left the door and ran up the stairs.

As he came into the control room most of the people in the room had gathered around a screen which showed relayed the information from the sensors.

"What did you have to show me Dax?" Roger said as he approached the group.

"Well either we have a glitch in the sensors or we're seriously fucked." Dax said as Roger came up to the screen.

"I only see a lot of red and two blue dots." Roger said as he tried to understand the information.

"That's the problem, the red is unidentified or hostile ships while the blue is friendly ships." Dax said. "And the red dots are coming here."

"Do we have an ETA?" Roger asked.

"Hard to say at this time, but I'd say we have around a week." Dax said. "After that we're as good as dead."

"Well now we know how they managed to intercept Veva and her ship at the supergate. They're simply everywhere" Roger said. "I'm assuming it's the same race."

"Comparison of partial hyperdrive signatures suggests that it's the same." Dax said.

"Here's the information concerning the door Sir." A man said as he joined the group at the screen.

"Thank you." Dax said as he took the datapad from the man and begun to read through it. "Well this is interesting."

"Don't keep me waiting Dax." Roger said.

"You seem to have found the door to McKay's former lab, now the site for project White Angel." Dax said as he kept reading.

"And what is White Angel?" Roger asked in frustration.

"Well they seem to have observed the Deadalus which had the alternate reality drive and when they needed to escape they begun to build one of their own to flee this reality with Atlantis." Dax said.

"So what went wrong?" Roger asked.

"They never had the chance to board the ship and study the drive." Dax said. "Their calculations are of by a large margin but mostly it came down to a lack of parts and equipment. The enemy had already pushed them back to the city and they had no ships left to gather the material needed to produce the parts and equipment."

"So can you fix it?" Roger asked.

"Sure, at the moment we can gather the needed materials from most of the solar system and with any luck we should be able to produce what we need in the factories on the pier." Dax said. "The largest problem is the power required."

"Yea right, McKay drained an entire ZPM just to send himself back right?" Roger asked.

"Correct. But the power required is dependant on the mass moved through dimensions, hence the reason why the alternate reality drive uses a subspace capacitor which feeds near ZPM levels and it will never run out of power." Dax said. "But that was with a relatively small ship in space. This is a huge freaking city sitting on a planet."

"So you suggest we move the drive to a small ship then?" Roger asked.

"No, we're almost four hundred people here and any ship we can all fit aboard and survive on for any longer time will have to be quite large so we might as well take the city with us."

"Then what's the problem?" Roger asked.

"The planet, we need to dump it before we can ever hope to perform a jump." Dax said. "And for that we need to have the shield and stardrive online or at least the subspace engines."

"So get working on what we need to take off then." Roger ordered and begun to walk away towards the staircase before he turned around. "See if you can find me a route down to the lower levels, with any luck Lucius will be able to get us some power."

"You won't find him in this city." Dax said. "It was the first thing I looked for in the database, but the entrance have been reported destroyed in an early attack on the city by the Wraith and it was never repaired. At least from the pieces we've managed to sort out, they seem to have attempted a purge which only cleaned out bits and pieces of the files."

"So they purged their own database?" Roger said.

"Yes, probably to hide any other remaining bases they had out there." Dax said.

"Well get working on the shield and the drive." Roger said. "How far away would I need to be to dial out with a stargate while this one is active?"

"At least a few hours away with a jumper." Dax said. "It would of course go faster with a hyperdrive and a gate already on a planet."

"Have we heard anything from Veva yet?" Roger asked.

"They where still trying to dial the supergate last I heard, but I doubt it will be locking any time soon considering the fact that it hasn't locked yet." Dax said. "They could give you a lift to the closest gate on their way to Pegasus."

"I was thinking of going to Chrona and see if it's still in a working condition." Roger said.

"Chrona has already been confirmed to have been destroyed according to the database or at least they would have us believe it is." Dax said. "At the moment the only known locations in this dimension which haven't been marked as destroyed is the Tower, Cheyenne Mountain and Atlantis."

"Then we need to find another source of power." Roger said. "Could we use the power source of the supergate in the system?"

"No, it's power source gives of to much of a charge at one time, it would fry the city's systems and possibly us too." Dax said. "What we need is a few ZPMs, a hell of a powerful Naquadah generator or a few Ori Power cores."

"Well concentrate on the repairs and I will try to fix a power source in the meantime." Roger said as he left the room and went down to the level which held project White Angel and kept working his way down from there.

For the next two days every man and woman kept working day and night on their tasks, either repairing the shield, stardrive and the alternate reality drive or searching through the central tower. Then Roger chose to abandon and leave the rest of the central tower to the rest of the men while he took a jumper to the Western Pier to search through the industrial district. As they flew in closer Roger could clearly see the small dry docks which still held half finished jumpers and fighters and further ahead he could see one of the larger dry docks which held the skeleton of an unidentifiable ship. But what really caught his attention was a large number of crates which were spread across a large open area and so he landed the jumper and ordered the men to search through the crates.

"Mostly empty or water filled crates over here Sir." One of the men shouted from a pile of crates. "But there's also a bunch of ZPM shells."

"It looks like this area is made up of several moveable platforms Sir." Another shouted as he looked up from a hole. "And we should be able to reach some lower levels through this hatch."

"Good. Lets finish up the search of the intimidate area and then head down there." Roger said as they moved on.

After another hour they had finished up the search which gave them only a few dozen ZPM shells, some other unfinished products and three more hatches, so they spread out and begun to climb down the ladders. Using their flash lights they looked down through the huge shaft as they descended. As they came about twenty meters bellow the deck above one of the ladders begun to creak a second before one of the bolts which held it in place came of and hit one of the soldiers in the head, causing him to fall. Had it not been for one of his fellow soldiers who grabbed him he would have plummeted to his death.

"Get of the ladder." Roger ordered as he watched the soldiers flash light falling down and crushing against the bottom while he heard the ladder creaking as more bolts came falling down.

"We'll try circle around and find another way over to one of your ladders." One of the soldiers shouted from a door they managed to get into seconds before the ladder followed the flash light down.

"Try to find a way to the top of the deck instead." Roger shouted. "I saw a window further down when the flash light flew by it, so we're going down there to see what we can find, might be some kind of control room."

"Yes Sir." The soldier shouted before he turned around and closed the door behind him, leaving the other two groups at opposite sides of the shaft.

"See what you can find at the bottom of the shaft." Roger ordered the remaining group.

"Yes Sir." The rest said as the continued their decent.

About two and a half minute later Roger reached the window and upon shining his light around the shaft he found it to be going around the entire shaft at this level.

"We're going in." Roger shouted to the other team before he opened a door to his right and stepped through, closely followed by the rest of his team.

On the other side of the door he was greeted by a large number of consoles and plenty of empty suits.

"Look at that Sir." One of his soldiers said as his flash light hit another window and the cone of light hit an Aurora on the other side.

"Might be a dock to repair the ships." Roger said as he looked through the window and saw the holes in the hull. "But we need to concentrate on searching through the level, the ship can wait."

"Yes Sir." One of the technicians said as he pulled out a starter, as the portable power sources Dax had created for the use on consoles had become known.

"Naquadah wouldn't hurt and maybe some generators too." Roger said. "Maybe some machinery which Dax can use to speed up the repairs."

"We're on it Sir." One of the soldiers replied as they all spread out into the huge room which not only continued around the shaft but also around the Aurora and beyond with several more windows overlooking shafts and other machinery.

"This is Dax to the Major over." Dax's voice came over the radio after a good hour and a half.

"This is the Major over." Roger replied as he forced open a closed door which revealed a teleporter booth.

"We're seeing massive movement over at the West Pier." Dax said. "The machinery seems to have awoken."

"Which means there's power coming from somewhere." Roger said as he caught up to Dax's thoughts and rushed back to the technician. "There's power coming from somewhere, find it."

"I'm already doing that Sir." The technician said. "It should be behind the first door to the right behind the Aurora."

"Thanks." Roger said as he sprinted the distance. "Dax, we have located the power source, going to investigate now."

"Be careful." Dax said. "It could be guarded by some kind of densenesses which have made sure it stays there."

"Don't worry." Roger said as he forced the door open and took a step backwards when it opened to make sure he wasn't hit by something. On the other side of the door he found a room which looked almost identical to the ZPM room of Atlantis. "Dax, I've got a ZPM room here and what looks like one working ZPM."

"Pull it out of there." Dax almost shouted over the radio. "It might not have much power left."

"Cool down Dax, I'm doing it as we speak." Roger said as he removed the ZPM.

"That wasn't good Major." Dax screamed over the radio. "The machinery is breaking apart from the sudden lack of power. Get out of there now."

"You're the one who told me to remove it." Roger shouted back as he left the room and ran back to the technician, only to see the roof coming down on him, crushing the window and pulling the technician with it into the shaft half a second before the jumper came down together with the roof of the shaft. "I need a jumper her right now Dax."

"We've already sent three of them your way." Dax replied just as Roger saw the floor collapsing under his team while they where running towards him. "You should seek out a place with some kind of reinforced roof."

"Any suggestions?" Roger asked as he managed to sidestep a crane which came crashing through the roof.

"If you can get topside that would be the best." Dax said.

"I can't do that, all four ladders have already flown by." Roger said. "And I don't know where there's any stairs."

"Hold on then, the jumpers are only a minute out." Dax said.

"I might not have a minute." Roger said as the floor opened up under his left foot and he was forced to drop the radio to grab a hold of the edge while still having a firm grip of the ZPM.

The following minute was probably the most horrifying minute of his life as he dangled from the edge until a jumper came into his field of vision and begun to back up to him while two men on the ramp tried to reach him.

"Sir, you'll have to let go of the ZPM." One of the men on the ramp shouted.

"We need it far to much for me to let go soldier." Roger replied as they tried to pull him onto the ramp. "Get it first."

"Yes Sir." The soldier said and relayed the orders back into the jumper which then flew over him and begun to descend behind him until one of the soldiers managed to grab the ZPM from his hand.

"You've got it?" Roger asked as h let go of it.

"We have it." The soldier said as the other soldier secured the ZPM to the seat. "Now lets get you out of here."

"Try to get the ramp beneath my feet." Roger ordered and when he felt the ramp beneath his right foot he let go. As he did he expected the ramp to be beneath both of his feet but before his left foot hit the ramp it got caught inside a hole making him land on his back on the ramp and causing his leg to break. "Fuck."

"We've got you Major." The soldier said as the two soldiers lifted him up and dislodged his foot. "Get us out of here."

"Happy to." The pilot replied as he closed the door and begun to fly the jumper towards the shaft.

"We're coming back from the West pier." One of the soldiers said into the radio. "We need a team of medics standing by to fix a broken leg."

"My arm too." Roger grunted while holding his left arm with his right hand.

"There's something wrong with the Majors arm too." The soldier quickly added.

"This is Dax over." Dax's voice came over the radio. "Bring him to the central tower, the medical bay is standing ready to take care of him."

"Roger. Changing course." The pilot said.

"I don't think Roger should be changing course." Dax replied.

"Copy that. Roger is not changing course. I as the pilot am changing course." The pilot replied a bit baffled after a seconds hesitation.

"Good." Dax replied. "We're seeing you on the sensors, head to the balcony which is still standing a bit down in the tower, the medical personnel is awaiting your arrival there."

"Copy that." The pilot said as the jumper came in over the balcony.

"Get that ZPM to Dax right now." Roger ordered as the medicals helped him out of the jumper and forced him down on a stretcher.

"We'll get it to him straight away Sir." One of the soldiers said as he climbed back into the jumper and the pilot took of.

"What's that?" Roger asked as one of the medics pushed a needle into his arm.

"Just something to keep you calm." The medic said as Roger's eyes became heavy and his brain felt that it was a good time to sleep.

As he came to Roger could see the familiar sight of the medical bay roof.

"It's good to see that you're awake." A nurse in a tight short skirt and an even tighter top said as he begun to look around.

"How long have I been out?" Roger asked.

"Almost a day." The nurse said as she checked something on a datapad. "You had both a broken leg and a broken arm so they had to do some improvised surgery."

"Meaning what?" Roger asked.

"Well you're going to have some scars on both your arm and leg." The nurse said as she put down the datapad on a nearby table. "You might loss some strength in both the arm and the leg too, but we can't be sure of that just yet."

"I need to make sure that I start to train immediately then." Roger said as he sat up using his other arm.

"You need to rest for at least a day." The nurse said and pushed him down in the bed.

"No I need to make sure the ZPM gets installed and that we either find another ZPM or we manage to find another power source." Roger said.

"Don't you worry about that." The nurse said as she kept pressing him down, now only using one hand. "Dax have already installed the ZPM and they'll find another soon enough."

"How do you know this?" Roger asked just moments before she touched his forehead and he returned to sleep.

"What happened?" Roger asked as he awoke another time.

"You broke your leg and arm." A man in a white coat said as he examined the datapad.

"I know that, but that nurse touched me and I just passed out." Roger said.

"There's no nurses here yet, only me and a few other doctors have gotten to the central tower yet." The man said.

"But I saw her. She had long blond hair and a really tight outfit." Roger said.

"That was probably caused by the sedatives we gave you." The man said as he put down the datapad.

"Well either way I need to get back to work." Roger said as he tried to sit up but he found a large pressure to be pushing down on him as soon as he did.

"Well I guess I could try to order you to stay in bed, but I know you won't be following the doctors orders." The man said. "Your muscles might be a bit weaker in your damaged leg and arm since we had to cut them to fix the bone, so try to at least use a crutch."

"Can you give me a hand Doctor." Roger asked as he once again failed to get up.

"Sorry Major, but I won't do that." The man said as he walked out of the room.

"Doctor." Roger screamed after the man to no avail.

"Just rest for now Roger." He heard a voice say, coming out of nowhere.

"Who are you?" He shouted into the thin air.

"We are here for revenge." A choir of voices was heard. "You are just the bait Roger, but we won't do what you do with worms and feed them to the fish, we will pull you out first and then we'll pull out the fish too."

"The bait for what?" Roger asked in confusion.

"For them, for the Empire." The nurse said as she came into the room. "They nearly exterminated us once, now it is our time to take the fight to them."

"Who are you?" Roger said as she approached him and once again held out her hand against his forehead. "I need ans..."

Before he could finish the sentence he'd returned to sleep.

Next thing Roger knew was a lot of noise coming from all around him and when he managed to open his eyes he saw the roof flying by.

"What's happening?" Roger asked as he sat up, this time without the pressure on his chest.

"Thank god you're awake." The doctor from before said. "You've been in a coma for almost a week."

"A week?" Roger asked as he begun to move his limbs, still sitting on the stretcher the doctors and nurses where pushing him on. "Then the enemy must have been here for several days."

"Yes, Veva have just returned from Pegasus and we've been ordered to evacuate to her ship." The doctor replied. "The engineers managed to get the shield to work just a few hours before the enemy arrived."

"So why are we evacuating then?" Roger asked. "The shield should be able to hold the enemy of for a long time."

"We've been told that we won't get another chance like this again to escape." The doctor replied.

"Stop." Roger shouted as an image flashed before his eyes.

"Why?" The doctor asked as they stopped the stretcher.

"It's right here." Roger said as another image flashed before his eyes, this time followed by more, turning it into a movie.

"It's a plain corridor Major." The doctor said as he looked around. "There's nothing here but a floor, two walls and a roof."

"It's here all right." Roger said as he forced himself of the bed and walked up to the right wall. "I can feel the energy." As he came up to the wall Roger did just what he saw in the images which kept flashing before his eyes and begun to turn and move pieces of a wall mounted artwork until it showed Atlantis gate address, than he pressed it.

"Ouch." One of the doctors standing at the other wall said as a panel in the wall swung open and hit him in the head.

"That's it." Roger said as he moved over to the panel and removed the black box which was sitting inside the hole behind the panel. "We need to get this to Dax right away."

"You're in no condition to be walking around." The doctor said.

"Who said anything about walking." Roger said as he forced his body to run to the closest transporter booth with all of the doctors closely behind.

"Dax have shut them down to save power." The doctor said as they reached the booth. "You won't be able to use it."

"That won't be a problem." Roger said as he stepped inside and begun to press multiple points on the screen at the same time. "We'll just override it."

"You can do that?" The doctor said as the doors closed and the booth activated.

When the transporter opened again Roger was no longer inside.

As soon as the transporter had done its job Roger ran out of it and hurried to the ZPM room.

"Put that back." Roger ordered as he saw two soldiers removing the ZPM.

"We're to remove it and bring it to the ship according to the Lieutenants orders." The two said.

"I'm back in charge here." Roger said as he pushed the two aside with one hand and put down the box on the ZPM hub.

"Yes Sir." The two said as they got up from the floor.

"Get word to everyone that we're staying in the city." Roger ordered as he pushed back the ZPM into the hub and opened the box to reveal another ZPM which he pushed into another slot.

"Yes Sir." The two said as they ran of while shouting things into their radios.

As they two left Roger moved over to the console and begun to push buttons and checking the readings from the ZPMs. When he was satisfied that the ZPMs had enough power he shut down the console and ran of to the transporter which he used to get down to the chair room. There he sat down and begun to sort through the data relayed by the sensors and it didn't look good with thousands of hostile ships orbiting the planet and more on the way, but given the limited effect the enemies weapons had had on their shields for the past days he didn't feel to bad about their chance when he powered up the stardrive and the city begun to shake.

"This is Major Rogers." Roger transmitted over the city's internal speakers. "We're leaving, but not without the city. Secure anything which may fall over or get damaged during take of."

"We don't have enough power to break away from Earth's gravitational pull Major." One of the lieutenants said as he came running into the chair room. "We'll never make it."

"Lieutenant, I have these images running through my head and they show me just what needs to be done." Roger tried to explain as the city left the surface of the ocean. "Lets just say we already have enough power to take of. If you can plug in the Naquadah generators into the alternate reality drive and get Veva's ship inside the shield we'll be ready to jump only a minute or two after we leave the planet."

"There's no way we'll be able to take of even with enough power let alone land Veva's ship on the city." Lieutenant said.

"The ship just needs to touch the city for us to bring it along on the ride." Roger said. "Now get to work, that's an order."

"But Sir." The lieutenant begun just as Roger sealed the doors to the room with the lieutenant outside.

As the city approached the edge of space the barrage from the hostile fleet increased so Roger sent out every drone in the city to take out as many as possible, but the number of ships were far higher than the number of drones so it only slowed down the rate at which the city lost it shield.

"This is Veva over." Roger picked up Veva's voice over the radio. "We're approaching the southern pier, but I don't see how you expect us to land."

"I don't, once you're close enough I'll expand the shield around you, that should pull you along." Roger said.

"Should?" Veva asked sceptically.

"Yes, I haven't really talked to Dax yet but I think that it should work from my understanding of it." Roger said.

"He's right, you only need to be inside the shield to be pulled into the dimensional rift the drive will create." Dax voice confirmed over the radio. "I suggest that you hurry up though, Roger's feeding most of the energy from the ZPMs into the drive, we'll jump in two minutes."

"No we won't Dax." Roger said as he kept a close eye on the sensors. "We've got another wave incoming and I've got to have most of the power going to the shields if we're to make it."

"Here they come." Veva said as the enemy dropped out and begun to fire upon the city.

"This won't end well Roger." Dax shouted over the radio as the city was shaken by thousands of blasts and was pushed back into the atmosphere.

"Yes it will." Roger said as he detected the supergate activating. "Backup has arrived."

"Backup?" Veva asked as an Aurora came through the gate followed by hundreds of others.

"Yes, just like the images I keep seeing." Roger said as he watched the images he'd seen for the last hour coming true.

"Major. The gate have shut of, but we have an incoming wormhole." Dax said. "Is this part of your visions too?"

"No, raise the shield." Roger ordered. "Keep them out at all cost."

"The shield won't activate." Dax said.

"I don't have the time to activate it from here Dax." Roger said as he forced the city back up into space.

"Major. The gate's deactivated again, a single girl came through." Dax said. "And we have control over the gate's shield again."

"Take her to the medical bay for examination." Roger ordered as he begun to feed power into the dimensional drive again. "Our backup seems to be taking the brute of the attack so I'm feeding power back into the drive."

"We're inside the shield Major." Veva reported half a minute later. "But our backup seems to have problem."

"Yes they won't be making it." Roger said as he lost two more friendly ships from the sensors. "But they wanted this fight and used us as bait, so let them have it."

"Jumping in three... two... one... jump..." Dax said as the drive powered up and pulled both the city and the Ori mothership through the dimensional rift just as the last of the friendly ships exploded in a ball of fire.


	3. Chapter 3

"Looks like we made it Dax." Roger said as he begun to check all systems.

"Yes, but we've fried much of our unprotected gear, just like when the Ori did it." Dax said. "But at least some of the more sturdier radios and datapads should still work."

"We'll deal with that in time." Roger said. "For now we need to find a planet to set down the city on before we lose power. That take of and jump drained one of the ZPMs almost completely and half of the other."

"I can see that, we'll move the Naquadah generators to assist the ZPMs because if we need to jump we better stay in space." Dax said. "But I think we should see if there's nothing we can use on Earth to assist us."

"See what you can find Dax. You've got twenty-four hours to search through Earth. If someone's looking for me I'll be in the medical bay to see our guest." Roger said before he got out of the chair.

When he came into the medical bay he found the doctors to be in a full blown wrestling match with a young lady who looked like she was in her late teens.

"Let her go men." Roger said to the doctors who backed of from the girl. "Who are you?"

"Luna Albinus." The girl said as she looked around the room. "Now you turn."

"Major Roger Knight." Roger said. "You remind me of a nurse I saw not too long ago."

"That would be my mother." Luna said as she picked up a scalpel. "She uses the appearance of a nurse when she talks to humans, it makes them feel safe."

"Humans?" Roger asked sceptically.

"Yes, like the men behind you." Luna said and pointed the scalpel at the doctors. "Now I'd like for you to return me to our people."

"Our people?" Roger asked.

"Yes the Alterrans." She said.

"You mean the Ancients, the Lanteans?" Roger asked.

"Do not confuse me with the mere footsoldiers you call Lanteans." Luna said as a cup came flying towards him, but it quickly lost its speed and crashed into the floor halfway to him. "The Lanteans as you call them are nothing compared to the power of the Alterrans. We created them and we can eliminate them just as easily."

"Take it easy girl." Roger said as he walked up to her and took the scalpel from her. "There will not be any kind of elimination today, besides there's a good chance the Wraith have already managed to exterminate the Ancients in this reality just like in our own."

"Once again I must correct you." Luna said. "Our people have studied many realities any not in a single one have any Wraith ever faced a true Alterran, or Ancient as you call them, in battle."

"You know the Ancients of our reality didn't think highly of the Lanteans either, but they were only created by a single Alterran." Roger said as he recalled the story. "The Alterrans themselves where largely wiped out by any enemy coming from the centre of the galaxy."

"We took care of them long before I was born." Luna said. "We waited for them to advance on the other factions and when they were at their weakest we wiped them all out."

"You killed your own creators?" Roger asked in chock.

"As I said it was before my time and I only know what my mother and father has told me, plus some basic knowledge from the database." Luna said. "I have only reached the first level of Parate Nobis so I haven't been able to access all of the database yet."

"Parate Nobis? Care to explain that?" Roger asked.

"The ritual of maturity I guess you would call it or maybe lesson of maturity." Luna said.

"But I don't see how any of that would matter, the only thing you need to do is to help me get back to my mother and father."

"I take it it was them who came through the supergate and attacked the hostile armada?" Roger said.

"That would be my father Aelius, the leader of our people." Luna said. "Mother doesn't really agree with him on whether we should be leading a crusade against the Empire or not, but he's in charge so he's the one calling the shoots."

"I'm sorry to inform you of this Luna, but the last of those ships were destroyed just as we jumped to another reality." Roger said.

"No no no no, that can't be." Luna said.

"The sensors don't lie." Roger said.

"I need to see this for myself." Luna said.

"Follow me then." Roger said and led the way to the closest transporter booth which brought them up to the control room.

"I see our guest have awoken." Dax said as the two entered the control room.

"Yes she has." Roger said as they came up to Dax. "Bring up the data the sensors captured the minutes before we jumped."

"That's some pretty violent stuff Major, I'm not sure it's suitable for a young girl." Dax said.

"For your information I'm almost fifty six rotations." Luna said.

"You're fifty six years old?" Dax asked in surprise.

"We know the Lanteans grew to be far older than humans, so it stands to reason that they matured far slower." Roger said and watched as Luna got more and more angrier for each word he said. "But we can assume the Lanteans were created as a far lesser species in the image of their creators and hence the Alterrans would mature even slower."

"That assumption would be correct." Luna said as her brain discarded everything but Roger saying that the Alternas were far superior to the Lanteans. "According to the Lanteans own legends the Alternas created them in their own image to help them rule and unite the universe, in truth we created the Lanteans simply because of our low birth number due to our advanced evolution, we needed soldiers and pilots to fight our wars. I was the first birth in a millennia."

"Well now that we've concluded that she's almost as old and far older than you Dax lets watch that data." Roger said as he came to think of all the years he'd been around, gen therapy and nanites had really helped to increase his time in service at the SGC.

"Sure." Dax said as he brought it up on the screen and played through it, starting with the Alterran ships arriving through the supergate then moving onto their victory over the next wave and their subsequent death and destruction at the hands of the next waves.

"That can't be." Luna said as she ran of with Roger following closely behind.

"Come on Luna I know our sad but we need you." Roger said as he walked down a corridor in search of her. "Your people were the mightiest race to ever live in this universe, you might just be a child in their eyes, but you're their only hope of ever returning to power."

"Our people haven't been living in a universe since long before I was born." Luna's voice replied. "Ever since my father came to power our people have been moving from universe to universe in an attempt to find a way to take down the Empire. His last plan was to launch an ambush and try to capture one of their ships in an attempt to find out which universe hosted their home base."

"But why lead a crusade against them in the first place?" Roger asked as he followed her voice down the hall.

"According to my father long ago, before even my mother or father was born our people learned how to cross the boundaries between realities and for a long time we prospered. We built bases across the realities and traded with other races but then one day they came as a flood, drowning everything in their path. In under a day our people lost every outpost and settlement outside our own universe, three quarters of the Alterran population was killed with the remaining fleeing back to our own universe.

But they followed us and attacked again, this time however we managed to hold them of, the Lanteans dying in billions every day. In the same fashion the war went on for almost a full rotation until the most powerful ascended Alterran sacrificed themselves to activate a machine, a lock of sorts, which sealed away our universe so that only ships with an Alterran or a Lantean commander could enter or leave, any other ship would explode upon entering the rift." Luna said as Roger found her sitting behind some boxes. "When we emerged from the war we numbered less than a thousand and our fleet was almost none existent. In an attempt to bolster our number we offered the Lanteans the chance to become Alterrans, but they viewed us as gods and refused. In the following years my mother and father was born and they watched as the oldest and wisest of the Alterrans lost their will to live and slowly faded out of existence. My father eventually came to the conclusion that the only way to regain what we had lost would be to take revenge upon our enemy and so when he came to power he ordered our entire race to leave our universe and search for the enemy so that we could get our revenge."

"And according to your mother?" Roger asked as he sat down at her and felt there to be another side to the story.

"According to her our race was forced to flee our original universe due to our own eagerness to learn, an experiment begun to tear apart our universe. The universe we then decided to inhabit had a few friendly races but plenty of other more hostile races which drove us out, we then settled in other universes at the same time in lesser numbers, through other races we came to know and indirectly trade with the Empire. Somehow the Empire came to know of our search for a new universe to call our own and they directed us towards it in exchange for information about some of the universes we had visited. The new universe we were given directions to was everything we had ever wanted, plenty of space to expand into and almost every planet could support life without to much work on our side.

For a long long time we lived in peace with six major and twelve minor races, but then something changed, my mother believed that we came under attack from a terrorist group from one of the minor races who believed that they should be the dominant race. Because this minor race had so little to say about things they begun to work as diplomatic envoys, setting up meetings between races on their ships so that neither side could attack the ship. One of these ships accidentally jumped into one of our systems without informing us of it first, the Lantean commanders in the system opened fire on them before they even raised their shields, on that ship there must have been something or someone of great value because soon after all the other races declared war on us.

We had become such a large faction during the peace that we easily won the war that followed, but the Empire would have none of it and when they joined the war the tide turned. We had only tried to protect ourselves in the war and from what we knew the Empire usually helped that side, mother means that this pointed to something changing in the Empire shortly before the war. The war with the Empire weakened us to such a degree that when we finally managed to seal our universe the other races were a threat for really. At the closing days of the war with the Empire both my father and mother was born. When my father came to power he was already together with my mother but he became diffusionally be a number of victories against the other races and ordered us out to search for the Empire so that we might get our revenge." Luna said. "I'm not sure who's right, but what everyone I've talked to agrees on is that the Empire fired the first shoot."

"You said that your universe was protected from the Empire. Is there any way we can access it?" Roger asked as he tried to comfort her.

"With the use of this." Luna said and pulled out a crystal hanging around her neck like a pendant. "Mother said it's the last way home and the key to our people's future. But our people has been out here for millions of years, the other races will have solidified their hold of the universe by now."

"Let us worry about that later." Roger said as he helped her up. "This city can outrun anything we've ever faced and with any luck those millions of years will have caused the other races to either forget about you or at least loosened up security around your former home."

"Really? You'll take me to the place our people once called home?" Luna said surprised.

"Of course, we need a place to stay and if this Empire exists over multiple realities then your universe will be our best chance to find a safe haven." Roger said as Luna jumped up and gave him a hug.

"Thank you." She said as she ran of with the crystal in one hand and Roger in the other towards the control room.

"Is see you have managed to catch her." Dax said with a laugh as Luna pulled Roger up the stairs into the room.

"Shut up Dax." Roger said as he took the crystal from Luna and handed it to Dax. "See what you can find on this. It's suppose to be a way to the Alterrans home universe."

"Well it's a data crystal that's for sure." Dax said as he plugged it into the console and looked through what was on the crystal. "Looks like it's a sensory data analysis program built to adapt itself to pretty much any sensor it has access to."

"Run it." Roger ordered.

"Running it now." Dax said as two circles appeared on the screen connected by a line. After about a second a third circle appeared but it didn't connect to the other.

"That's home." Luna said and pointed to the third circle.

"How do you know that?" Dax said as more and more circles appeared around the other three.

"It's the Alterran sign for home." Roger said as he recognised it from the images which where still running in his head.

"Well I'm going to guess that we're here." Dax said and pointed at the second circle which had an arrow pointing at it.

"That's right and the other is the reality we got the city from." Roger said.

"I'm going to hold onto this for now." Dax said. "See what else might be hidden on it."

"Sounds like a good idea." Roger said as he watched Luna yawn. "Meanwhile I think I'd better help the lady find a bed before she falls asleep were she stands."

"I'm not that tired." Luna said as she yawned once again.

"Remember the clock Dax." Roger said as he walked of leading Luna towards the stairs.

"I know, there's still twenty hours to go." Dax said and returned to work.

"Here we go." Roger said as he opened the door to some quarters a few stories bellow the central tower and helped Luna, who was almost asleep, onto the bed.

"Tell me a story before you leave." Luna said as Roger moved towards the door.

"A story. I don't know any stories really." Roger said.

"I know humanity have many stories." Luna said. "I've meet some humans in other realities and they've all known some story."

"Well I guess a suiting story would be the Princess and the Pea." Roger said as it was what he came to think of when he saw her there.

"I know this one, it's about a princess who has to prove she's a princess." Luna said.

"Well what else do we have?" Roger said as he tried to come up with another while pulling out a nearby chair.

"I want to hear it." Luna said.

"Really?" Roger said. "Well it starts with a princess."

Several hours later Roger found that he'd fallen asleep at some point when he was awoken by Dax's voice sounding through the internal speakers of the city. "Major please come to the control room."

"Looks like they need you." Luna said as she looked at him from the bed.

"Yea.." Roger said as he got up from the chair. "You know how long I've been asleep?"

"At least a few hours longer than I did." Luna said.

"A few hours longer than you?" Roger said.

"Yes, your body needs to repair all the damage." Luna said as they left the room.

"I guess forcing myself to run wasn't really the best thing to do either." Roger said.

"Nope, but it was probably what was needed." Luna said.

"Can someone tell me where the hell the Major is?" Dax was shouting as Roger and Luna entered the control room.

"Chill out Dax." Roger said as they came up to him.

"Major is that you?" Dax asked in surprise.

"Who else would I be?" Roger asked a bit sceptically.

"Well it's just that.. look for yourself." Dax said as he stepped away from the screen he'd shut of.

"The screen's shut of Dax." Roger said as he stepped up to the screen, then he saw the reflection. "Well there's a face I haven't seen in some twenty years."

"You should get down to the medical bay Sir." Dax said. "That's not natural."

"Yea, I'm on my way down there." Roger said and hurried of to the closest transporter booth.

"So what can I do for you?" The doctor in charge asked as Roger stepped into the room.

"I need a full medical examination." Roger said and laid down on the stretcher.

"You look just fine to me." The doctor said after a quick glance at Roger. "In fact you look better than most of the soldiers in the city."

"I'm the oldest one here Doctor, I'm not supposed to be looking better than most." Roger

said. "It's me the Major."

"You must be suffering from a mild case of dehydration soldier." The doctor said as he stepped over to the stretcher and begun to hook up several of the Ancient machines to him. "Well there's no lack of water or any other substances in your body."

"The Major is on his way down to the medical bay, give him a proper examination." Dax voice came over the doctors radio.

"Is that really you Major?" The doctor asked in surprise as a handful of nurses and doctors came into the room.

"Yes it's me." Roger said as they hooked up even more machines to him. "When I fell asleep I looked like the sixty year old man I am, when I woke up I looked like this. I haven't seen this face in almost twenty years."

"Prepare for reality jump." Dax voice came over the internal speakers.

"We can't be supposed to be jumping yet." Roger said as he heard a countdown ringing out.

"Twenty four hours on the mark." One of the doctors said.

"I've been asleep for twenty hours?" Roger asked in shock.

"What did you expect?" Luna said as she sat on the next stretcher. "It takes a lot from the body to heal the damage you've sustained over time."

"I think I've found the problem." One of the doctors said and pointed to a screen. "Your DNA is changing and mutating rapidly at a pace I've never even heard of before or let alone though possible."

"Oh yea, that would add to the drain of bodily energy." Luna said.

"I can't say for sure but I'd say that looks like forced evolution." Another doctor said. "Much like what Dr. Beckett recorded when Dr. McKay's body was pushed to the edge of ascension."

"Luna did you have something to do with this?" Roger asked.

"No I did not." Luna said.

"But you know who?" Roger asked.

"Yes, mother did." Luna said as if it was known by everyone. "Or at least I'd guess it was her work since she's usually the one who messes with people's DNA."

"You knew of this?" Roger asked.

"She didn't tell you?" Luna asked in surprise.

"No she did not." Roger said. "How long have you known?"

"Oh, well she must have been in a hurry then." Luna said. "I've known ever since you stepped into the medical bay, I felt your telepathic presence even then, it's been growing ever since."

"So you know what's happening to me then?" Roger asked.

"Yes, most likely mother have picked you to carry on the Alterran legacy. She often said that when father finally drive us to extinction she would pick one final individual who was worthy to be advanced to ensure that a new generation of Alterrans would rise." Luna said.

"Most likely?" Roger asked.

"Well I've also heard of her killing people by changing their DNA." Luna said as she though back. "She was somewhat of a master with DNA."

"So which is more likely?" Roger asked.

"Well the last time I heard she'd advanced three individuals since they left our home in times when there was a good chance father would lead us to our death." Luna said. "But she's killed a few hundred plus the twenty or so she did other things to."

"I didn't need to know all that, I only wanted the odds." Roger said.

"I'd say the first. But I've she hasn't done anything like that since I was born so I don't know." Luna said.

"If something has been done to force you to evolve Sir then all we know about it is when Dr. McKay was forced into it he required massive amounts of food." One of the doctors said.

"But General O'Neill didn't." Another said.

"That wasn't the same thing, that was mostly knowledge not evolution." A third doctor said.

"I've got to get back to Dax so you guys can give me a call when you know something more." Roger said as he pulled of the wires and got up.

"You're sure mother didn't tell you about this?" Luna said as she followed him out of the room.

"Yes. She didn't tell me more than that I needed to rest." Roger said as they stepped into the transport booth.

"Well I guess if your civilisation isn't yet at the point where you help other to advance you wouldn't know that it requires massive amounts of bodily energy." Luna said.

"You could have told me." Roger said.

"I would have if I had known you didn't know." Luna said as the reached the control room.

"So Dax what was it that you needed from me before you then sent me down to the medical bay?" Roger said.

"Well at the time I only wanted to inform you that we where about to jump to another reality. We detected the hostile armada on their way here so me and the lieutenants decided that we would jump one more time in an attempt to avoid them." Dax said.

"Did you find anything on that Earth?" Roger asked.

"No, we didn't even find any traces of civilisation on the planet." Dax said. "But we just found this on the crystal Luna gave us."

"What am I looking at Dax?" Roger asked as he looked at a screen filled with code.

"Well it's a brand new program which compiled a second after we jumped." Dax said.

"So what does it do?" Roger asked.

"Well I would have loved for the creator of the program to leave a manual, but they didn't." Dax said. "We'll have to go through the entire program and map it out before we can say."

"I've seen that before." Luna said and pointed at a part of the code which showed on the screen. "My father's navigators used that."

"Well this part is used when we calculate the jumps." Dax said and pointed at a part of an equation which took up half the screen. "It could be an advanced version of what we use."

"Anything else that's new on the crystal?" Roger asked as he felt the conversation going over his head.

"No but the old program has updated to show a new circle." Dax said as he brought it up on the screen. "And as you can see in the top right corner the numbers have changed."

"Those numbers are coordinates." Luna said. "I've seen them change when we jumped between dimensions."

"So the new program might be a program to calculated which reality we end up in?" Roger asked.

"It might be, but we'll have to at the least find out which parameters they use and if it would work with the drive we have." Dax said.

"Do what you can." Roger said. "Do you know where I can find Veva?"

"I think she's in the mess hall." Dax said. "They've been running search parties through her ship while also running some diagnostics and it's about lunch time for them."

"Thanks Dax. I want another jump in twenty four hours." Roger said as he walked away with Luna following in his footsteps.

"You do an awful lot of talking, you know that?" Luna said.

"Yes, but as the one in charge I have to keep tabs of everyone." Roger said.

"When you have talked to this Veva I want you to come with me Major." Luna said. "It seems like you have no idea what it means to be an Alterran."

"How would I know anything abut being an Alterran?" Roger asked as they stepped into a transportation booth. "Our civilisation have only ever had brief encounters with any Alterrans."

"Which mean I get to be the teacher and not the student." Luna giggled as they came into the temporary mess hall in the central tower.

"Don't push it Luna." Roger said as he looked for Veva in the mess hall. "You teach me what it means to be an Alterran and I'll teach you how to be a bit more mature."

"Deal." Luna said as Roger lead the way to Veva.

"Major. You look younger." Veva said as he and Luna sat down with her.

"Tell me what you found Veva." Roger said and ignored the last part.

"Well not much, we didn't find any traces of the Tower were it should be." Veva said. "And we only had time to search through the closest systems before we had to return the Atlantis."

"To bad, but at least you managed to return with both your ship and your life." Roger said.

"Yes. But I heard this is where all the action was." Veva said.

"I'm not sure what you've heard, we managed to secure a ZPM at the cost of several men, I haven't really had the strength to ask how many of the men I brought with me to the pier died." Roger said.

"Everyone, you were the only one they managed to rescue." Veva said and looked down at her food. "We have soldiers searching trough the pier to find their bodies, but much of it is beyond repair and makes it really hard to search through."

"Well I didn't really need to hear that." Roger said. "I heard you were running diagnostics on the ship, when do you think it'll be ready for use?"

"It's ready as it is, but our shields took a proper beating, might even have damaged one of the shield generators." Veva said.

"Would you feel comfortable to take it to Chrona?" Roger asked. "We might get at least a ZPM from it."

"I'll see what I can find as soon as we have the shields at maximum power again." Veva said.

"We'll be jumping in twenty four hours so might be a good idea to schedule it for after the jump then." Roger said.

"We'll have it ready by then for sure." Veva said.

"Good. Now I apparently have to start learning how to be an Alterran." Roger said as he got up from the table.

"Hey Major, the looks suit you." Veva said as Roger got to the door.

"Just wait until the mutations stop." Luna said as she picked up five rations from the buffet and ran of after Roger.

"So first lesson. Eat when you can." Luna said and threw three of the rations to Roger when they stopped in a corridor. "I know some that some humans have a weight problem, but don't worry about that. Our bodies will survive months without food but that doesn't mean we should at our age, our bodies are constantly growing and changing and that requires energy, which comes from food and sleep."

"So food and sleep." Roger said as he tore open the ration.

"Yes, now I'm not sure but I think that the forced evolution from mere human to Alterran will add to your daily energy requirement." Luna said. "So while I need plenty of food and sleep you will need even more."

"I don't know if I have the time to sleep twenty hours each day Luna." Roger said as he opened the second ration.

"Twenty hours is a bit excessive and that was most likely to be because your body had to repair both your leg and your arm." Luna said. "But I'd say sixteen at least."

"That's a bit much but I guess I can live with it." Roger said as he opened the third ration.

"You'll have to live with it or your body will break down." Luna said. "As soon as your body have gotten past the worst of the change from human to Alterran you should be able to go down to maybe eleven or twelve which is were I'm at."

"So excessive amounts of food and sleep to make sure I survive the change." Roger said.

"Yes, and training, plenty of training." Luna said.

"Wouldn't training use up the energy?" Roger asked.

"Yes, but it will also force your body to regenerate and increase the rate at which the new mutations are taken up by the body." Luna said. "I guess a pump would be the best way to view it, by training you increase the pumps speed."

"So what, should I be running or boxing or what?" Roger asked.

"I've been living on a spaceship most of my life so I've never really tried running except for a few times when we visited a city like this." Luna said. "I prefer swimming or other water training."

"I don't think we have a pool to swim in at the moment, but I think we can set up an obstacle course or a cross country running track in the tower." Roger said as he looked at a pile of debris.

"Mother told me I should run any time I could, apparently some study thousands of years ago showed that the body could grow to maturity in half the time if you trained at least eight hours each day compared to someone who never trained." Luna said.

"Eight hours? That would mean that I'd sleep then train and then go right back to sleep." Roger said. "I can't do that, I need to control things here."

"I'm sorry but if you don't train it'll only take longer." Luna said. "Let Dax handle things in you place, he seems like a good human."

"You mean a good guy." Roger corrected her.

"Yea." Luna said.

"You're right. But the Lieutenants are next in the line of command." Roger said.

"Whatever you decide Roger you need to do it now, the faster we start our training the faster you can get back to leading this group of humans." Luna said.

"You don't have to sound so negative when you talk about humans." Roger said.

"But the Lanteans are a primitive species compared to the Alterran and compared to the Lanteans humans are primitive." Luna said. "So it stands to reason that the humans are more primitive than Alterrans."

"First rule to being mature." Roger said. "Don't judge until you know all the facts. I'm still part human but I don't see you judging me."

"But the part of you that's Alterran brings you up above the Lanteans even now." Luna said.

"Listen now, humans don't live as long as Lanteans and Alterrans but that only means that we learn to appreciate life." Roger said.

"So you mean that I should get to known them before I judge them." Luna said doubtfull.

"Exactly, you said that Dax was a good guy. Why didn't you push him down like you do with everyone else?" Roger asked.

"Well he seems to be a smart guy, he figured out that the new program on the crystal was used to make dimensional jumps." Luna said.

"That's what I mean. Dax is smart." Roger said as he got up. "Everyone here is good at something. Veva is a great captain and she might even be the most suited of us to lead a fleet. The Lieutenants are both great leaders, one preferring fighters and one preferring going on foot. We don't live long and therefore we specialise."

"I'll remember that, I'll try to get to know them, to understand what you see in them." Luna said as she lead him over to a pile of rubble which blocked a doorway. "So my next lesson for you then. As you might have noticed when I tried to throw a cup at you in the medical bay the Alterrans posses the power to moved things with our mind, give it a try."

"You barely managed to throw a cup halfway to your target Luna." Roger said as he inspected the rubble. "You can't expect me to move this."

"You're right I don't, but I can feel something on the other side of that rubble that I think you might want." Luna said. "Moving things with your mind is an extension of telepathy. I can already feel your telepathic presence, it's grown considerable since I first meet you."

"So what do you want me to do then?" Roger asked.

"Sit down with me." Luna said and sat down on the floor.

"Now what?" Roger asked as he sat down in front of her.

"Now close your eyes Major, try to feel what I do." Luna said as she pressed her forehead against his.

"Feel how?" Roger asked.

"No talking." Luna though as she concentrated and begun to probe him with her mind. "Now try to follow."

"That's creepy." Roger thought as he felt her pulling his mind from his body so that he could see himself floating around above it.

"You'll be doing it without thinking soon eventually, at least according to my mother." Luna thought. "I still have to concentrate or get angry to sense or influence."

"What's that?" Roger asked in his mind as he tried to reach something which looked like a bright white light to his mind.

"That would be me." Luna answered. "It's a representation of my mental powers. As mother and father was ascended beings theirs where far larger, sometimes taking up an entire room depending on how many places required their attention. We call them visios."

"What does my visio look like?" Roger asked in excitement.

"I can barely see it, but it's golden and very bright." Luna said. "It'll grow larger as you train and get better at it."

"And how do I train?" Roger asked.

"We're doing it now." Luna said as she pulled his visio around the corridor. "It'll get easier the more you do it and as your body matures your Vio will grow in volume, further increasing your power."

"And what is a Vio?" Roger asked as he forced his mind further out from his body.

"It's an organ or rather a fluid which stores your bodily energy and channels your will." Luna said as she brought them back to their bodies.

"It feels like I've had a few drinks to many." Roger said as he took back control over his body.

"You mean alcohol?" Luna asked as she helped him up.

"Yes." Roger said.

"I've never tried that but the Laneans drink it sometimes to celebrate." Luna said.

"Well you get really dizzy and your stomach feels like it wants to get rid of everything inside it." Roger said. "The day after you get a terrible headache."

"That's what happens the fi..." Luna begun before she heard a thud behind her.

"Were am I?" Roger asked as he opened his eyes.

"You fainted from exhaustion Major." One of the doctors said. "Luna told us and we brought you here."

"And were is she?" Roger asked as he sat up on the stretcher.

"Oh, you're awake?" Roger heard Luna's voice in his head. "I've got a surprise for you."

"She said she had to prepare something for you two." The doctor said as Roger looked around searching for Luna. "She said that you would have to feel her to find her."

"That doesn't really help." Roger said as he looked around one more time before leaving the medical bay.

"Come on, feel me." Luna's voice rang through his head.

"You're in my head now?" Roger asked loudly as he looked around each and every corner on his way to the control room.

"No, I'm just projecting my thoughts, just like you are." Luna's voice rang out once again.

"I'm just talking as if you would be standing next to me." Roger said as he came into the control room.

"Who are you talking to?" Dax asked as he watched Roger entering the room.

"Then you'd be looking like a fool, sit down and concentrate like I taught you." Luna's voice said with a laugh.

"Shut up for a minute will you Luna?" Roger shouted. "Sorry about that Dax but Luna's talking to me through telepathy, or at least I think see is."

"Chill out man." Luna's voice sounded in his head. "I'll be quite and wait for you."

"So why are you running around shouting like an idiot then?" Dax asked.

"Because I can't reply her unless I speak." Roger said. "Honestly I haven't really tried to do it yet but there's more pressing matters at hand."

"Oh I see." Dax said with a hint of hesitation in his voice.

"But as I said there's more pressing matters at hand." Roger said. "Were are the Lieutenants?"

"One's searching through what remains of the west pier after your little trick and the other's preforming a search of this Earth." Dax said.

"Do they know about my condition?" Roger asked.

"Yes, I've personally informed them both." Dax said. "They took it rather well."

"Then this will comes as no surprise." Roger said. "Get me a channel to them."

"Done." Dax said and handed Roger his radio after a few seconds of pressing buttons.

"Thank you Dax." Roger said as he took the radio and pressed down the button. "This is Major Rogers speaking. Due to the rather unique condition my body and mind is in I leave Dax, Veva and you two in command until further notice with orders to search for a way to jump to the reality Luna's people used to call home, thanks to Luna's father we've attracted the attention of the Empire and we will therefore jump to a new reality every twenty four hours unless you can justify staying any longer, but even then I want no more than thirty six hours between each jump."

"Major, I don't think I should be leading alongside them. I'm not ready for that." Dax complained as Roger returned the radio to him.

"Dax, you're already leading the scientists and engineers, that's all you've got to do now too." Roger said as he walked towards the exit. "You'll learn."

As soon as he'd left the control room Roger sought out a quiet corner and sat down with his eyes closed. "Were are you?"

"If I told you then you wouldn't learn as much." Came the reply.

"Don't be like that Luna." Roger said as he forced his visio out of his body and begun to search for the white light that was Luna.

"Be like what?"

"I don't have time for games." He said as he watched the faint white wave which had carried the reply continue to spread out to his left above his head.

"But games are a great way to training."

"That's true, but serious training gives better results." He said as he saw his own golden wave spread out from him and catch up the Luna's latest wave which this time had come from the other direction.

"But to train you have to learn how to do it." Came her reply as Roger found a transporter booth and used it to get down four levels.

"So what are you trying to teach me then Luna?" He asked and watched as her reply came through the roof almost on top of him.

"Telepathy."

"This feels more like hide and seek." Roger sent as he moved up one level and saw her run by. "I've got you now."

"First you'll have to catch me." Luna said out loud as she jumped over a beam which was blocking a door, rolled up and jumped head first into a gap between two beams.

Without hesitation Roger followed her, jumping over the beam, then squeezing his upper torso followed by his legs between the two beams and pressing on into the rest of the track that Luna had built by clearing away debris.

Over the course of nine days Roger and Luna spent eight hours each day running through the track, adding or removing something at the end of every lap, making each lap they ran harder and more excruciating. The rest of the days Roger spent sleeping while Luna also managed to press in four hours of telekinesis training.

"Come on Luna, rise and shine." Roger said as he came knocking on her door on the tenth day.

"No, today we rest." She replied from inside.

"Why? You said the more we train the faster we develop." Roger said as he opened the door.

"Yes but on the tenth day we rest, our bodies need time to recover from the exercise we've been doing for the last ten days." She said as she rolled out from under the blanket she slept under completely naked.

"I'll wait outside." Roger said as he turned around while Luna got dressed in her white and brown really tight dress which after Luna's modifications to stop it from slowing her down really didn't cover to much up.

"No need." Luna said as she pulled on his clothes with her mind. "Privacy is a bit overrate in a society where everyone can in theory feel and see what happens behind closed doors."

"Need I remind you that so far there's only one and a half Alterra in existence." Roger said as he allowed her to turn him around with her mental pulls.

"Technically only one." Luna said. "You're still more Lantean than Alterran."

"Don't be like that." Roger said as he swooped her up and walked of with her over his shoulder. "You're still a child in their eyes."

"You don't have to mention that at every turn." Luna complained as she spun around so that she instead sat on his shoulder which resulted in a black eye as Roger walked under a beam. "Ouch."

"Sorry about that." Roger said as he gently put her down on the floor.

"Hey that's nothing." Luna said as Roger could see the colour already fading from around her eye. "But today's Mesra and that means that we shouldn't really do anything that puts our bodies under stress. So I suggest that we go and have a nice breakfast with the rest of the crew and then find some nice place to look out into the wonders of space, maybe do some light exploring."

"They're going to wonder were they picked up another kid if I go there now Luna." Roger said as he stopped. "I mean look at me, sure I'm a bit taller than I used to be but I'm looking like a kid. There's a reason as to why you're the one who goes to get us food."

"I thought that was because I got up much earlier than you?" Luna teased.

"No, I let you go and get the food because I can't be seen like this." Roger said. Over the course of the nine days his hardy outer appearance had been replaced by that of a twenty-year-old who in worst case might have been mugged in an alley, it was far from the battle hardened looks he'd used to make his soldiers trust him enough to follow him to hell and back. The worst part was that it didn't show any signs of stopping any time soon.

"You're still sound asleep when I go to get the food." Luna said.

"No, I go to bed far earlier than you to get up at the same time as you." Roger said as he followed Luna who'd continued down the corridor. "Please Luna, go get us some food and we'll go of to explore some part of the city."

"I'll go and get it." Luna said. "I'll meet you down at the course."

"Thanks Luna." Roger said as he watched her walk of before he turned around and hurried of down to the course.

Ten minutes after Roger arrived at the course Luna arrived with ten rations.

"So were do you want to go?" She asked as she handed him six of the rations. "Dax said they've got most of the western Pier mapped out with the help of the jumper's sensors, even if some of the areas are still unreachable, but at least the bodies of all your men have been recovered."

"He said anything about getting the factories working again?" He asked.

"I only had a short chat with him before he was called over to the eastern pier by one of his engineers." She answered.

"To bad, those factories might help the rest of the damage the city has suffered, especially the towers which fell when the city rose from the waves." He said.

"I've actually watched one version of Atlantis being built, while we made a quick stop there they built the towers and thousand of Lanteans worked on each tower. Rebuilding the towers will take both materials and personnel we don't have." Luna said.

"We? I'm the leader of these men, you're just a girl we picked up along the way." He said.

"I'm no ordinary girl, I'm an Alterran, thereby I should technically be in charge by default." Luna countered.

"In your world maybe, but not in this city." Roger said. "But if you show your worth then maybe I'd consider giving you some small command."

"Hey, that's not fair." Luna complained.

"Yes it is, everyone here have deserved their position, you'll have to do too." Roger said. "But you've seen many versions of Atlantis right?"

"Yes I've seen twenty or so, that's were I learned to speak English, but I don't see what that has anything to do with me not deserving a position in your eyes." Luna said a bit confused.

"Well nothing really." Roger said. "But I came to think of the archive, in our reality we had many weird things stored there and since its not in the central tower there's a good chance no one haven't explored it yet."

"You want to explore it?" Luna asked.

"Well that depends on the size of it, in our reality it wasn't really so large that we can explore it, but a search is doable and it would give us something to do during a few of these Mesras until we can find something better to do." Roger said.

"I'm play." Luna said as she moved towards one of the doors.

"You mean you're game." Roger corrected before pointing in the other direction. "And it's this way actually."

"No, the archives are always to the north." She argued.

"No, they're to the south." Roger said. "I've even checked to make sure that tower was intact."

"Lets ask Dax then." Luna said as she came back to him. "He should be able to pinpoint it."

"No, you said Dax was called away by one of the engineers so it's a safe bet that he's busy with something important. But from the chair room or the control room we should be able to find it ourself." Roger said after doing some thinking.

"Control room it is then." Luna said as she moved of towards the closest transporter booth.

"No, the chair room." Roger shouted as he ran after her.

Before they had even reached the transporter booth Luna had managed to use Roger's changing body and the hormones that followed to convince him that the control room was the best place to go.

"I take it that little guy you're with is the Major Luna?" Veva teased as the two entered the control room, immediately making Roger feel like he made the wrong decision.

"Fuck of Veva." Roger shouted as he showed her aside and walked up to the console she had been using.

"Oh, a bit stingy are we?" Veva said as she noted that he'd taken the only used console in the room. "Did you really need that specific console?"

"No, I just wanted to piss you of Veva." He said as he searched through the information in the console, seeing it rolling by in his mind rather than on any display. "Now instead of just standing there looking like a moron you could update me on what you've managed to gather from the realities we've passed through while I've been transformed into this youngster."

"Sure." She said as she looked through the reports on her datapad. "Realities one through five were dead ends quite literally, no life signs on Earth and no Chrona. In two and four the sun had died and in three and five it was bombarded from orbit at an early age in such a manner that the crust never settled. The first was simply without an atmosphere, Dax speculated that the sun had burned it away since it was close to dying. Neither had any signs of Chrona or any other signs of the Ancients ever entering this galaxy, Dax tried to dial a few times but we got no lock.

Realities six and eight had other species as the dominant one on Earth, six having some kind of liquid species, no gate and no Chrona. Eight had a reptilian species, some kind of lizard, there was a red gate buried in Antartica but no other as far as we could tell, we did however manage to find Chrona but it had been destroyed long ago and we only managed to salvage a single ZPM from one of the destroyed ships which floated around it."

"A ZPM isn't a total waste of time Veva." He said as he dug deeper into the database.

"True, but it had only a very limited charge left." She replied. "Anyway, seven had a humanoid race spread over much of the planet with the gate sitting in Egypt and the Beta gate still in Antartica. We suspect there's a Goa'uld presence but we saw no signs of any ships, no Chrona.

Number nine was much like the reality we first arrived in with tons of space junk floating around in the entire system, but no signs of Atlantis or Atlantia on Earth, at Chrona we found a path through the debris large enough for the station to move through so there's a chance they've taken Atlantis and Chrona and fled. One of the lieutenants managed to salvage some kind of android, Dax is hopping to retrieve its memory core and see what happened to them.

Today's reality, number ten hasn't given us everything, as far as we can tell it's empty, no sign of the Milky Way, Pegasus or any galaxy at all so we're jumping again in an hour to try our luck in another system."

"Mark down seven, nine and ten as interesting enough to deserve a more thorough examination." Roger said as he memorised the last of the information.

"I can see seven and nine to be interesting in an effort to gain allies but ten is worthless, there's nothing there." Veva said.

"Which is why it's interesting, we could either try to harvest the subspace energies there or have it as a testing ground, nothing to destroy and no one to hurt." He said as he backtracked to what Veva had been doing on the console so she could continue.

"All three have been marked as interesting." Veva said as she understood what he meant.

"Good." He said as he mentally sent the information to Luna and moved towards the transporter booth.

"Were are you of to now?" Veva asked as she returned to the console.

"Some exploration." He simply said as they left the room.

While much of the database had been erased he'd managed to piece together that the archive was in fact in the west part of the inner city and so that was were they headed.

As they arrived in the room, which was slightly larger than the one Roger was used to, they found everything to be thrown against one wall, which didn't really come as a surprise since the transporter booth had made them aware of the fact that the entire tower had tipped over, but never the less they had managed to get out of the booth and had struggled to make their way to the archives. Now all Luna could do was stand there and stare as she tried to decide what crate to open first while Roger begun to systematically go through the crates closest to the door one at a time

"Prepare for dimensional jump." One of the lieutenants voices sounded in the city's internal speakers about an hour later. Half a minute later a white flash went through the city followed by a large bang a few seconds later.

In the control room chaos ensued when the first impact hit the shield.

"Status?" Lieutenant Stephen Buckley shouted as another impact shock the city and he had to brace himself against a beam.

"We've jumped into a battle between four Ori motherships and a single 304 which is currently using us to shield itself." A technician answered. "Judging from the state of surrounding space we've arrived for the finale."

"We've got an incoming transmission from the 304." Another technician said as the shields took a third hit.

"I'm reading four smaller crafts exiting the system at sublight speeds." The first technician reported. "And another eight inbound through hyperspace."

"Chair room, get rid of the Ori ships for us." Stephen shouted into the radio before nodding to the second technician.

"I don't know who you are, but your timing couldn't be better." The man on the other side of the transmission said as his face showed up on one of the monitors in the room.

"You're more than welcome. We're reading another eight incoming ships and four ships fleeing towards the edge of the system." Stephen said as and threw a quick look at the sensors just in time to see the number of Ori ships sinking to one.

"Those fleeing ships are our 503 H'n'B class transports, humanity's last hope for survival." The man said. "We could use your help with defending them until they can jump to hyperspace outside of the solar system."

"Have your ship enter our shield any we'll give you a lift." Stephen said after a seconds hesitation.

"Thank you." The man said as he gave some hand signals to his crew and the ship begun to move.

"You are more than welcome." Stephen said as he watched the ship enter the shield. "Tau'ri needs to help Tau'ri."

"How true. But Goa'uld need only help themselves." Stephen heard a split second before both he and the rest of the crew in the control room found twenty cm long blades sticking out through their chests.

"We have secured the control room my lord." A Jaffa said as he bowed before the screen, still holding the blade which dripped of blood in his hand.

"Good." The man said as his eyes flash a bright yellow and his voice took on a much deeper sound. "Set a course for the slaves transports, we shall eliminate them before we deal with the Ori."

Unseen to the eight Jaffa in the control room, who'd used the rings of the 304 to get into the city through the transport booths, one of the crew members still breathed not only because the Jaffa had simply driven the blade through him without thought but also because the right lung which would have been punctured had been removed, this soldier who still had the blade through his chest managed to punch in the alarm code before rolling around so his back was against the console, performing a sweep with his PP-90 killing six of the Jaffa before two shoots from a Zat gun took him out of the game.

All around the city the Jaffa who'd sneaked aboard sprung into action against their Tau'ri saviours, killing them without mercy until the alarm went of and the Tau'ri soldiers retaliated.

"My lord, we have taken the city but still a large group of Tau'ri soldiers are holding up inside the chair room." A kneeling Jaffa said to the Goa'uld who'd been in control of the 304, now standing in the control room of Atlantis. "I fear we have far to few Jaffa left to take the room."

"Do not question your god." The Goa'uld said. "Kill them in any way you can, but do not damage the chair."

"Yes my lord." The Jaffa said as he turned around to leave, only to find himself staring down the barrel of Roger's handgun the moment before the inside of the barrel spit a round into his head.

"Now Luna." Roger said as he aimed the gun at the Goa'uld.

"You think a mere mortal like you can stop me?" The Goa'uld laughed as Roger emptied the clip into his personal shield which flashed golden every time a round hit.

"No, but I'm sure the two of us can." Roger said as he discarded the gun and drew an Ancient pistol he'd brought from the archives at the same moment that Luna managed to crush the insides of the tiny shield generator.

With a single press of the button Roger sent a blue energy burst into the Goa'uld.

"This is the Major, do anyone copy?" Roger said into a radio he took from one of the dead soldiers.

"I hear you Major." Veva's voice returned half a second later. Together with the sound of a battle.

"I hear you already know of the invading Jaffa." Roger said as he begun to punch in a number of commands on one of the consoles. "I'm going to preform a reality jump, we might be able to burn out their Zats."

"Yes Sir." Veva said.

Without further thinking Roger diverted all power from the ZPMs into the drive, forcing it to activate in just under two seconds with him pumping power into the drive another two before he diverted it back into the shield.

In the hurry that Roger was in to restore the power flow to normal and Luna's chock from having helped to kill someone neither noticed the Jaffa who came sneaking into the room until he drove his blade into Roger's back, at which point Luna drew the particle magnum, which Roger had forced her to take when the alarm went of, and fired it in pure fear at the Jaffa and hit with almost every shot, the rest hit Roger.

The entire thing had taken less than an hour but it had taken the lives of two hundred men and another eighty Jaffa.


	4. Chapter 4

"Ouch, what happened?" Roger asked as he woke up in the medical bay for the third time in two weeks.

"You got a knife through your back." Luna said from the bed next to his and held up the knife, which looked more like a sword than a knife.

"Then there's also the four shots to the chest, one in the shoulder and one in the knee which a trigger happy little girl put in you." A doctor said from the other side of the bed. "But Luna patched you up with one of those Ancient healing cubes."

"Hey I shoot at the Jaffa, if I hadn't then Roger would have been stabbed again." Luna complained.

"One shot with it set to kill would have been enough even against a Jaffa, especially if you aim at the face." The doctor countered. "The other twenty four shoots was no more than overkill."

As the two continued to argue whether more than one shoot to the face was needed to kill a Jaffa Roger begun to ignore them, instead focusing on his own body, trying to feel what was hurting

"Anyway while you where unconscious your DNA mutated massively, Luna tells me you should be fully Alterran now." The doctor said with a smile just as Roger begun to listen again.

"Which means no more long naps required, at least no more than I need." Luna said as she jumped of her bed and up on his, pushing the edge of the knife into his leg.

"Luna." Roger shouted as he felt it sliding into his flesh.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She said as she removed the knife from his leg and put it on the other bed. "I'll just leave this here for the time being."

After another examination of his DNA, which still mutated much faster than Luna's but admittedly much slower than before, the doctor gave Roger the all clear and so he hurried out of the room.

After hurrying out of the medical bay Roger got up to the control room just in time to see two soldiers carrying away the Lieutenant.

"Good to see that you're on your feet Major." Dax said as he saw them entering.

"Skip the pleasantries Dax." Roger said. "How many did we lose?"

"Four fifths of the men." Dax said.

"So we're down to sixty then?" Roger asked after doing the math. "We need to find a safe haven fast."

"Fifty actually." Veva corrected.

"The good news however is that we know were we are." Dax said and brought up thousands of circles on the screen.

"I know where we are Dax, we're in hell." Roger said.

"No I mean that last jump landed is in known territory, at least to the Alterrans." Dax said as he showed the circles to be realities. "The crystal must contain some sort of computer which gives the current dimension an address of sorts and we just entered a dimension the crystal's given an address to before, it's effectively hooked up the dimensions we've visited to its network of dimensions."

"Which means that you can find home." Luna shouted as she realised what it meant.

"Yes." Dax said.

"Prepare to you there then." Roger ordered.

"We can't just jump there Major, the drive would burn out from the energies required, we'll have to make at least five smaller jumps." Dax said. "But with some of the information we just got from the crystal we should be able to use the Alterran's equation, so we might cut it down to four."

"Kind of like the Wraith's hyperdrives?" Roger asked.

"No not at all. But speaking of the bad guys that 304 isn't a 304 but rather an Al'kesh with a fancy paint job." Dax said. "We had some men search through it but it's empty, the bridge is actually the only part inside which looks like it belongs there aside from the outside and the boarding ramps."

"Salvage it for parts." Roger ordered without hesitation.

"Major, that's a working spaceship. It might be Goa'uld and a bit slow but it's functional." Veva said.

"Veva, we're moving through realities at a minimum rate of one each day, how far would that ship be able to get before having to turn around in order to get back in time?" Roger said.

"I see your point." Veva said as she did the math in her head. "And we can always use the materials from it to improve the city."

"Good. Dax I want you to lock down the transport booths so nothing like this happens again." He said. "If someone needs to use one they just radio in about it."

"Yes Sir." Dax said as he got to work on one of the consoles.

"We're moving the city too just to be sure we avoid surprises." Roger said as he moved of towards the transport booth. "And can someone please teach Luna how to aim and shoot? Thank you."

A few minutes before the city was scheduled to jump Roger pulled it out of hyperspace and awaited the jump before throwing the city back into hyperspace only a second after the jump, leaving the Milky Way far behind. Over the course of two days four more of these dimensional jumps where performed while the city ship pressed on further and further away from the Milky Way with each passing dimension.

As Roger was about to activate the hyperdrive as they arrived in the reality which Luna's people came from he felt a mental tug, not from Luna but rather the chair he was sitting in directing him towards a galaxy which the database had tagged as "BX442/Home", after only a moment of hesitation Roger changed the course of the city and activated the hyperdrive, starting the four week long journey.

During the time which followed their departure from known space the now fifty men strong crew retreated from the piers and consolidated their hold of the central tower and the inner city while Roger and Luna kept up their hard training, adding buttons which required telekinetic pushes after two weeks.

Almost exactly four weeks after departure Roger once again found himself in the control chair as he pulled the city out of hyperspace at the outskirts of the galaxy. Not to Roger's surprise he found another nudge from the chair towards a spot halfway into the galactic disc with the coordinates already entered into the computer, so hi simply set a course for the coordinates and launched the city back into hyperspace for another ten minutes until they reached the target system.

On a balcony in the inner city where she'd been practising with her particle magnum Luna could see absolutely nothing, just like everyone else who tried to use their own eyes, but the ones who looked at the space outside with the help of the sensors saw the former bright star which by now had toned down to just a fraction of its former glow, only reflecting what little light the surrounding black holes let through.

As Roger moved the city closer to the black dwarf a short series of subspace messages was sent from the city and in under a second a reply came out of nowhere just before a large space station de-cloaked right in front of the city, but without help from the sensors it wasn't visible until six lonely lights begun to illuminate it before another six just above the other came online thirty seconds later.

"Luna, get your crystal back from Dax and meet me in the jumper bay." Roger said into the radio as he got out of the chair and hurried of towards the nearest transporter booth, not feeling like keeping the others in the dark.

"I'm already on my way." Luna's voice replied a moment later.

"You can't seriously be thinking about taking a lone jumper against that." Veva said as she hurried towards her own ship.

"Not against it Veva, to it." Roger said as he continued on his way to the jumper bay, having already locked down Veva's ship with the tractor beams which held it in place and all but one jumper with their own systems, he knew that in time Dax or one of the other engineers would unlock it, but the understanding he'd gained from his transformation about Alterran technology and computers had allowed him to ground the jumpers, set the tractor beams to maximum pull and then locking it.

"I've got the crystal." Luna said as she came running up the stairs into the jumper bay from the control room.

"Get aboard." Roger said as he directed her into the jumper which was still operational and sat down at the controls.

"You're thinking that the crystal is a literal key don't you?" Luna asked and broke the silence which had existed since they had taken off, only broken by Veva cursing Roger for grounding her ship.

"No, I just think that it's been really fucking useful so far and it wouldn't hurt to have it with us." Roger said sarcastically as he set a course towards the station. "I'm pretty sure it's a key of some sort, either it was the key that gave us access to this reality or it will give us access to the station."

"You're giving me some mixed messages right now." Luna said in confusion as the jumper was caught in tractor beams and Roger shut of the engines, letting the beams guide them into the station.

"It's called sarcasm, you'll learn it when you grow up." Roger explained as a quite small hatch opened and gave free passage to the jumper.

As the jumper came to rest on the floor inside the station Roger and Luna moved out of it, both with their weapons drawn.

_"__Welcome to research base Omega Seven." _A voice said in Ancient as they left a the jumper a few metres behind and a hologram came to life in the middle of the room. _"The pass code you used to bring this station back into phase is not scheduled for use, has there been an emergency?"_

_"Computer, what can you tell me about this crystal?"_ Luna asked as she held out the crystal in front of the hologram.

_"__High grade control and encryption crystal, most commonly used to gain access to high security files and facilities without having to remember a minimum of eighty fo__u__r parameters and a two hundred and fifty six symbol long equation." _The hologram responded. _"According to computer memory there's a good chance that this particular crystal was used just before the last Alterran left this station, but due to decay memory might not be correct."_

_"Please give us the access the crystal has then." _Roger said with in almost fluently Ancient.

_This way please." _The hologram said and led them up to one of the walls. _"Please insert the crystal here."_

_ "Here goes nothing." _Luna said as she slid the crystal into a small hole in the wall.

For a few seconds nothing happened, but then the hologram faded closely followed by the lights and for a good minute the two found themselves in complete darkness until the floor bellow erupted, throwing the two apart while a set of lights flashed in the celling above.

As Roger regained his footing he found both his handgun and his Asuran gun to be missing along with all his other equipment instead he had two new walls on his sides and one a few meters behind him. But what caught his attention was a rack along one wall which held a three feet long rifle that looked like it from a few decades into the future with three blue lights running down the barrel each side of the barrel. On the right side of the stock a scope was attached to a set of rails to allow for easy switching between scope and iron sight. Along with the rifle hung two bracelets which Roger hurried to get on before he picked down the rifle from the rack.

Two seconds after he'd taken up the rifle he heard a sound which reminded him of a Wraith Dart, but as he looked down the corridor he could see two red blasts coming towards him. With a single motion he dropped and rolled to the other wall before sending back a few blue bolts back down the corridor with a few fast taps of his trigger finger.

Two seconds after he'd taken up the rifle he heard a sound which reminded him of a Wraith Dart, but as he looked down the corridor he could see two red blasts coming towards him. With a single motion he dropped and rolled to the other wall before sending back a few blue bolts back down the corridor with a few fast taps of his trigger finger.

As he stood back up he saw two red bolts coming out of nowhere, but half a meter in front of his face they hid a light blue shield which quickly faded away again. Without further though on the shield he walked forward just as his two attackers stepped into the corridor a hundred meter in front of him with another wave of red bolts coming at him, but this time he didn't move, instead he let the shield take the hits as he aimed down the barrel and picked of the two hostiles with surgical precision. As he moved the sight between the two hostiles he spotted another two further down the corridor and after he'd dropped the two closest to him he dropped down onto his belly and pulled up the scope which snapped into place with a click. Then he pulled of two more shoots which only left a crater in the front of each enemies chests due to the long distance, so with another four in each enemy he dispatched them before he ran up to check that the first pair of enemies were dead and the no more where hiding in the cover before he did the same with the second pair, making sure to put an extra shoot in each for safety.

As he looked around at the last pair he spotted a line running up from the floor to the left, making a sharp turn around two meters to horizontal and heading down to the floor again a meter later. As he realised it was a hidden door he was looking he begun to search for a switch, but after ten minutes of searching he found nothing and sat down with his back to the door. After another few minutes he begun to relax and tried to feel his surroundings for any clue, normally Luna had to help him if he was to get more than a few meters from his body, but now he floated out of his body without any problems, getting all the way down the hall with his Vio before he realised that he'd left his body.

Normally he'd only see with his Vio when he used it, but now he more of sensed its surroundings while he still watched through his own eyes, he was even able to move his body. This feeling of sensing things was something Luna had described as a level eight telekinetic skill, with her at level three according to herself and him just barely at level one. The fact that Luna was calling him weak wasn't what he came to think of but rather the fact that a level six skill was telekinetic pushes at multiple points or a really strong one on a single point.

After withdrawing his Vio back into his body he stood up and begun to focus on the door which ever so slowly begun to give in to the power he was channelling into the door, after just over two minutes whatever was holding the door in place gave away and it flew out of the corridor, through a small group of hostiles outside and onto the ground a hundred meter away.

As he looked out the door he looked right into the a pair of compound eyes which belonged to one of the hostiles who looked inside the corridor with a baffled expression. For no more than a moment they both stared at each other, then the moment was interrupted by the hostile's companions who poured red bolts at them both, a few gracing Roger's shield as he threw himself out of their path.

From behind the cover of the door frame he could see a group with similar gear to him engaging the hostile group outside the door, so with them distracted he stepped outside and begun to fire into the hostile group with one hand while he threw them around telekinetically with the other.

"It's good to see that you're alive Sir." One of the men with similar gear said as he came up to him. "We thought we'd lost you."

"Thank you Commander." Roger said as he recognised the man as one of the Lantean commanders stationed on Ubire Prima. "What's our status?"

"We've lost the six outer rings of the city and the enemy have managed to penetrate another eight rings." The Commander said as they came under fire from a group of hostiles and had to retreat behind cover.

"We don't need to win this fight Commander, we only need to hold them of long enough for the civilians to evacuate." Roger said as he thought through his options and saw the Commander pressing two fingers to his ear.

"Sorry to say this Sir, but we have to leave you. Some of the infrastructural officers are trapped in the ninth ring and my squad have been dispatched by HQ to rescue them." The officer said as they both looked up and took out a few hostiles each before ducking down again.

"That's a negative." Roger said as he rolled out of the cover onto his stomach and killed the six remaining enemies. "I'll go rescue them. You need to get the hell out of here. "

"That's a suecide mission Sir." The Commander said as the rest of the men gathered around them.

"Better one man dies than an entire squad Commander. Tell HQ to leave us something with a hyperdrive." Roger said as he took of towards the closest entrance to the outer rings.

"Take this." The Commander shouted after him and threw an Ancient radio to him which he caught just before he rounded a corned.

After sneaking through a few defensive rings using tunnels and paths known only to the Alterran he came to the square with the infrastructural office sitting in the middle. All around the square he could see enemies standing on balconies and when one man came running out of the office they all aimed and fired at him, piercing his body from multiply directions. But without hesitation Roger stepped into the square and fired of ten shoots at the first before switching to his second target and fired of another ten, but as he was about to switch to the third he saw all shoots in the first and second salvo disappear into thin air. Then he was hit in the back by three red bolts which the shield failed to protect him from, to his surprise.

As he fell to the ground with gaping wounds trough his torso the computer which overlooked his progress used the mental link to hide all memories of the test from his mind before it uploaded the information he would need for the next test.

As Roger once again regained his senses he found himself looking into the eyes of a Lantean medic judging from the clothes.

"We need you on the bridge Sir." The medic said as she helped him sit up.

"What happened?" Roger asked as she helped him out of the small room.

"Your training pod failed while you where inside one of the training programs, we had to bring you to the medical bay to wake you up slowly." She said as they hurried towards the bridge.

"What's our situation?" He asked.

"I was informed that we will be arriving over Agartha soon." She said.

"Thank you, return to your station." Roger ordered as they came up to the bridge door and he stepped through.

"We'll be arriving over Agartha in ten minutes Sir." A Lantean sub-commander said as Roger entered the bridge.

"What's the status of the rest of the fleet?" Roger asked as he rushed up the control chair and sat down.

"Every ship have begun their combat preparations and the flagships of both the second and the third fleet are ready for combat." The sub-commander said as Roger ordered the ship to prepare for combat.

"General Isair should have the forth and fifth fleet under his command, he's a master at breaching crusts of Vysipt worlds." Roger said as he looked over what resources he had available. "General Caelina should have the third and sixth fleet ready to launch the invasion while General Tatius takes the seventh and eight fleet to intercept any hostile fleets which may try to stop our advance. I'll personally be controlling the first and second fleet."

"All three generals are standing by to take control of their fleets as soon as we drop out of hyperspace." The sub-commander said after a minute.

"Good." Roger said as he begun to draw up plans for his two fleets which consisted of mostly small destroyers and large frigates. "Return to you station."

"Yes Sir." The sub-commander said as he backed away bowing.

Just under ten minutes later a countdown begun to sound throughout the ship and as it reached zero the ship decelerated heavily as they dropped out of hyperspace with the rest of the fleets following less than a second later.

From his position at the centre of the bridge Roger watched as the defending Vysipt fleet, which was less than a twentieth the size of the attacking Alterran fleet, begun to take up position around the system while many more ships came from the surface of the planet, all with courses away from the attacking Alterrans.

Only a minute into the battle General Tatius had carved a path to the planet for General Isair who begun to position his ship for a breaching manoeuvre so that they could reach the Aghatri city inside the hollow world while General Caelina took her fleets into the atmosphere so the troops could launch their attack on the city as soon as the crust was breached. Meanwhile Roger had sent his fleets on two wide arcs to make it look like they tried to catch the fleeing civilian ships, in truth Roger had set the courses so that the civilian ships would be able to escape if they wanted to. Another minute and the crust was breached and the troops was beginning their assault on the city bellow while the last of the civilian ships jumped away to safety.

As soon as the last of the civilian ships had jumped away to safety the computer considered the test to be finished and Roger awoke to find himself sitting in a Destiny style control chair with the needles withdrawing from his temples and complete access to the memories of the tests. Sitting right in front of him was Luna who was sitting in an identical chair with needles withdrawing from her own temples.

_"Reviewing test score." _A male hologram said as two rows of information begun to run by on either side of it. _"Infantry test was passed with top scores and an extra __point__ in creativity __for using telekinetic to force the door open instead of ordering it to open mentally, __point reduction in adaptability for not switching to long range mode on rifle at sniper square. Fleet commander test was passed with an extra point in mercy for letting civilians go. Alterran civilization and culture tests were passed with negative __points__ in creativity and accessibility for not accepting new ideas._

_Overall test score is acceptable, __restoration of the Alterran as the rulers of the universe have begun__. Omega Seven wakeup sequence activated."_

"I take it you did the civilization and cultural tests?" Roger asked as he got out of the chair and stretched his legs.

"I did them all, but I don't know what he means by forcing a door, long range or mercy." Luna said as she did the same.

"Those where my feats." Roger said as the hologram motioned towards a door which opened up out of nowhere on the white wall.

"I got hit by something in the back in the first test and things went to hell on the second when I accidentally ordered two of my own fleets to attack the same target and they fired through the enemy into each other." Luna said as they followed the hologram through the door out of the room. "But the rest were simple and didn't require much effort"

"But you lost points in creativity and accessibility in the rest." Roger said as they came into another room and the hologram stopped.

_"__Preliminary diagnosis shows that the station have lost __its primary shipyard, only allowing for repairs to already functional vessels or the construction of smaller vessels."_ The hologram said as they stopped before a console in front of a pitch black window.

"Please identify yourself." Roger asked the hologram as the console awoke.

_"__Please repeat the question."_ The hologram said as lights begun to flicker to life outside the window to reveal eight dry docks in bad shape, but also a large amount of cranes and mechanical arms which was meant to perform repairs.

_"__Identify yourself hologram."_ Luna said as they followed the hologram out of that room and into the next.

_"__I do apologise, I'm the caretaker of Omega One."_ The hologram replied and anticipated their next question._ "I'm a virtual intelligence programmed to oversee and take care of Omega One until it was destroyed, at which point Lady Albinus rescued me, since then I've been in her service until her man decided that our entire race would leave this reality to seek revenge, at that point she uploaded information on classified installations, space stations and ships as well as multiple plans for how to resurrect the Alterra when the time came, for the moment we are following plan twenty-eight which says that if two Alterran, one male and one female should arrive we shall allow much time to pass so that they can reproduce to at least four generations before we make our presence here in the galaxy known."_

_"__That's not an option."_ Roger said as he watched several production lines coming to life outside the windows in the room.

_"__Lady Albinus have left me with the option to tweak plans to fit with more complicated conditions, but eventually the Alterran must reproduce, should only one gender be __available__ the Alterra must ascend so that he or she can elevate other of the opposite gender to an Alterran for reproduction." _The hologram said as it led them onwards.

_"__The Alterran reproduce different than humans or Lanteans, two Alterrans of different genders are still needed for the process, but then a machine is used for the rest of the process simply because the body of a female Alterran can't handle the stress."_ Luna explained as they carried on further.

_ "__Well that's good at least." _Roger said as they came into a room which looked identical to the gate room in Atlantis. "_Hologram, we need to contact __my men on board Atlantis."_

_ "Don't you find me attractive enough __for that?"_ Luna said teasingly as she pressed her body against his side.

_"It's not like that Luna, I've got a wife back home." _Roger said as the hologram led them up to a console.

"It's good to see your face Major." Dax said as his face appeared on the screen above the console.

"Good to see you too Dax." Roger said. "I think the station is under our control. There's a set of dry docks on the station and from what I could tell we should be able to make some repairs to the city there."

"I can see it on the sensors, we'll bring the city in for repairs." Dax said as the city begun to approach the station. "But I doubt the station can repair most of the city, it's just to small."

"Just get the Western Pier in working condition, I know the blueprints for the maintenance robots used on board Destiny can be found in the city's database, at least at home." Roger said.

"I'll see what we can find. But we'll need the original blueprints for the city itself to repair it." Dax said.

"We'll figure something out." Roger said before cutting the connection and turning to the hologram. _"What production capabilities do the station possess?"_

_ "__Diagnostics are still running on most systems, production lines included."_ The hologram responded.

_"What about power?" _Roger asked.

_"The station draws power from the star it's orbiting so there's no lack of power __unless we begin to use every system__, but power distribution has been compromised in several locations." _The hologram responded.

_"Con__c__entrate on getting __the production lines and the __repair docks working again. And see if you can find some blueprints for some automated repair things and maybe some blueprints for Atlantis itself." _Roger ordered.

_"__I've already started the automated repair mechanics of the station." _The hologram responded. _"There's currently six thousand three hundred and eighty-five versions of complete blueprints of Atlantis with another eight thousand nine hundred and two incomplete blueprints in my databases."_

_ "Well use the stations sensors to detect which version would apply to to city in the system." _Roger ordered. _"And I didn't ask you to turn on the stations self repair systems, I need blueprints to build something which __we__ can use to __repair Atlantis in the places where the stations equipment won't reach."_

_ "__At this distance it's not possible to determinate which blueprint would match the city."_ The hologram said before making a short pause. _"There's blueprints for five hundred and six different models of repair robots, androids or other types in the databases I have access to at the moment."_

_ "As soon as you have the model of the city I want you to select the repair bots best suited for making repairs to her and beam them over as soon as they're done." _Roger said.

_"The station does not possess the function you refer to." _The hologram replied.

_"You know, transporters, teleporters."_ Roger said.

_"We never used such things Roger, we always used shuttles." _Luna said.

_"Really? We'll need to fix that." _He said to her before turning to the hologram again. _"Get the repair bots on board the city in the best and quickest way possible."_

_ "You're going to try to research something with the few people you have?" _Luna asked a bit baffled.

_"No, there's no need to do that, I know for a fact there's beaming technology in the Milky Way, at least in some realities. We could buy it from either the Tau'ri or the Asgard, if either one wants something." _Roger said.

_"__There are no records of the Alterran ever visiting the galaxy you reefer to as the Milky Way in this reality, there's no way to know what you'll find there." The hologram reported. "But after leaving this reality it was one of the first directions they travelled in."_

_"So why not visit the Milky Way in this reality then?" _Roger asked.

_"Records show that the Alterran originally came from that part of the universe in their original reality, they chose not to visit it because they feared the effects of meeting themselves." _The hologram reported. _"Diagnostics which have just completed shows no damage to the majority of the production lines, but the few that have been damaged where the more productive and adaptable. The station is therefore limited in its capabilities to half capacity."_

_ "So get started on those repair bots and have them repair the rest of the production lines." _Roger ordered.

_"Control systems are not responsive." _The hologram said a second before a spark came flying out of a console nearby. _"Power surge imminent."_

_ "Shut of power to the entire station." _Roger shouted as a console exploded behind him.

_"__Intruder detected I'm being locked out of the system."_ The hologram responded as it begun to flicker. _"__Initiating emergency procedure __SS.__"_

_ "__What's procedure SS?" _Roger shouted as he and Luna hurried out of the room which exploded in sparks.

_"I've never heard of it." _She replied as they took cover behind a wall from an inferno of green flames.

_"Whatever it is it can't be good." _Roger said as they watched the flames die down.

_"But I do know what those flames where." _Luna said as she walked up to the door they escaped through and pointed at a series of holes mounted in the upper part of the door frame. _"Internal defences, great against almost anything which can move and controlled by each ship or stations __virtual intelligence."_

_ "So why attack us?" _Roger asked as he begun to examine what was left of the consoles in the room.

_"__I've got no idea." _Luna answered as she managed to get one of the console to respond.

_"__See what you can find."_ Roger said as he moved towards the door after checking the stations blueprints. _"I'm going down to the production lines to see if I can __figure out what went wrong."_

_ "__Just wait for Dax, his engineers can handle it."_ Luna said.

_"__Fine." _Roger said as he came back into the room, realising he really wasn't the most suited to be trying to fix something.

After waiting for a few minutes Roger watched over Luna's shoulder as Atlantis western pier docked with the stations docks.

"Come in Major. I think we're docked." Dax said as Luna pulled up his incoming transmission on a screen.

_"__Good work Dax." _Roger said. _"__I could use some engineers here to help with some repairs of the stations production lines."_

"Care to speak English?" Dax asked a bit baffled.

"Sorry." Roger said as he scratched his head. "Have some of the engineers standby for pick up. There's been a small accident and I need them to find out what happened and fix any damage."

"There we go, much better." Dax replied with a smile. "I'll have them ready for pick up in five minutes."

"There's no rush, the station seems to lack transport booths so I'll have to make my way to the hangar first." Roger said as he brought up a blueprint in his mind from the console and memorised the path to the hangar were he'd parked the jumper and then onto to the production lines.

"We'll have a ring platform ready for pick up too then." Dax said.

"Great, Roger out." He said as he closed the link.

_"__Check the crystal while you're down there in the hangar. I'll see if I can find out what happened to the caretaker." _Luna said as Roger moved of.

_"__Will do." _Roger replied as he left the room and hurried down to the hangar.

In the hangar he only found shattered remains of the crystal before he left with the jumper.

_"The crystal's shattered." _Roger said as he opened a channel to Luna while the jumper headed towards Atlantis.

_"Shattered? That's not good.__" _Luna replied. _"I've searched for procedure SS in the database and it means that the AI or VI will secure the facility's or ship's computers by sacrificing its matrix __to clean the system. Normally an AI or VI could apparently be restored from the crystal after doing so, but if the crystal's shattered then it's gone for good."_

_ "__Crap. I guess we have to do with what we already have and know." _Roger said as he approached the city and saw an Ori fighter leaving a ring platform on the tip of the southern pier where a group of people where waiting.

_"__Well we know more now, there's a huge file created just as he activated procedure SS." _Luna said. _"So far it's just a list of gate addresses and explanations of what's on the other side, but maybe there's something in it which we can use."_

_ "__So what places do the addresses lead to?" _Roger asked as he landed the jumper on the ring platform and latched it to the underside of the jumper while the engineers hurried on board.

_"__Most of it is planets which __at the time they left the galaxy would be suitable for colonization, but some seems to be addresses in other realities which could be of use." She replied as he took the jumper back towards the station._

_ "Well keep an eye out for anything which can be of use." _He said. _"I'll land and take the engineers to the production lines before I get back to you."_

_ "Will do." _Luna said as she cut the link and Roger dumped the rings and landed the jumper, before hurrying of down the production lines with the engineers in tow.

"We had a power surge coming from this area when the equipment was started. So see if you can find out why and if you can fix it." Roger said barely remembering to switch to English first.

"That's not a whole lot to go on Sir." One of the engineers said as a hatch opened on one of the machines and an eight legged, four armed robot climbed out and hurried of into the corridor between two of the machines.

"No, but it's what we have at the moment." Roger said as another two robots came crawling out of other machines before it all died down and all that could be heard in the room was the clicking of the repair robots legs. "There should be several consoles which you can run diagnostics on around here, just don't wander of into the station."

"Yes Sir." The engineer said as he walked of to find a console to work on.

"I'll take this so you can contact me." Roger said as he grabbed a radio from an engineer and left the room.

"You might as well get over here and see for yourself." Roger heard Luna say as he returned to the control room.

"I'll ring over there as soon as I've checked our ZPM levels." Dax's voice replied just as Roger came up behind Luna and he caught a glimpse of Dax's face just before Luna cut the link.

_"What's that about?"_ Roger asked.

_"Well the station stopped working on Atlantis after only half a minute and I can't figure out why, so Dax is coming over to see if he can figure out what's wrong." _Luna said.

_"The machinery in the basement did the same, it spit out three robots which I think where repair bots and then it shut down." _Roger said as he looked through the logs to confirm it.

_"That's odd." _Luna said.

_"Yes, but you better get going unless you want to keep Dax waiting at the rings." _Roger reminded her.

_"Right, on my way." _Luna said as she ran of to guide Dax up from the hangar.

Instead of just standing there waiting for Luna to go get Dax Roger got to work on the file Luna had found, reading through it while waiting for them.

"This is the effect of the small accident?" Dax asked as he came into the control room and saw the destruction inside.

"Yea, a power surge." Roger said.

"You should be luck even one of these consoles are working at the moment." Dax said as he came up to Roger. "May I get to work now?"

"Go ahead." Roger said as he stepped back from the console, still maintaining a mental link to the console, so he could continue to study the list.

_"You found anything good in the file while I was gone?" _Luna asked

_"Maybe, there's a military outpost mentioned in the file which might be of use to us." _Roger said.

"Hey, can you try to speak English while the rest of us is around?" Dax complained. "I might read Ancient, but I don't speak it."

"Sorry Dax, I've just gotten used to it." Roger appologished before turning back to Luna. "There's also at least a thousand planets in the file without gate addresses. Most marked for mining or farming."

"Mining you say?" Dax said as he cleaned the screen and started over. "Well there's your problem, the station has run out of resources, the automated repair systems have drained what little material could be found on the station when the Alterran abandoned it."

"I guess Veva is making a trip then." Roger said. "There should be a planet designated for mining only a few minutes a few through hyperspace."

"So what, she goes there and breaks open the crust with the ships beam weapon?" Dax said sceptically.

"No, but Luna's mother was kind enough to place a cache with what we need just a step through the gate." Roger said as he pushed Dax to the side before bringing up the address to the cache.

"I didn't see that in the file." Luna said.

"Just found it a minute ago." Roger said as he pushed a few buttons and the gate begun to spin.

"You're just going to dial it up and hope nothing bad happens?" Dax shouted as Roger picked up his gear, which he'd retrieved from the quarters the caretaker had assigned to him, and walked towards the gate.

"Well we don't have much choice do we?" Roger said as he came up to the gate which looked slightly different from the gates they where used to, all the chevrons were replaced by a red crystal on the top which enveloped the entire glyph on the grey ring behind and lighted up as it locked each glyph. The glyph on the ring itself was just as red as the crystal and the glyph which locked lighted up at the same time as the chevron.

"We could at least get a security team here." Dax shouted as he aimed his weapon at the gate from a balcony.

"We're already low on men, we need them on Atlantis." Roger said as the last chevron failed to lock.

"So the gate's gone. Guess we shouldn't have expected every gate to still be there after all theses years." Dax said just as the gate begun to dial again.

"Incoming connection." Luna shouted from the control room. "The same address is dialing back."

"Stay at a distance." Roger shouted back as he took cover in an alcove next to the gate just as the gate activated. After no more than a second an Ancient looking crate came sliding through before the gate shut of just as soon as the crate was through.

"Careful Major." Dax shouted as Roger walked up to the crate and kicked of the lid.

"Don't worry Dax, it's the cache." Roger said as he holstered the guns and picked up two of the small machines inside the crate.

"You're sure about that?" Dax asked as he came down to the crate still with his weapon raised.

"Yea, it's just what the file mentioned." Roger said as he put the lid back on and brought it up to the control room after removing a datapad from the crate. "Tell Veva to ready her ship for take of."

"I'm coming with you." Dax said and hurried after Roger.

"No, keep looking through the file for any more caches, dial them up and see what comes through. And if you have the time, begin to sort out what's on the list." Roger ordered as he pushed back Dax mentally and ordered the station to lock the door between them.

From there Roger carried the crate down to the hangar while he read through the instructions on the datapad. After being placed on the surface of a planet the machine would be activated from the datapad and would thereafter seek out any useful resources on the planet, using those resources to create more copies of itself while also channelling half of the resources to the creation of a small outpost with a mini gate, a gate built just to send and receive resources which had only a diameter of two meters and worked on a separate network, similar to the micro gates which was the size of a ring and where used to channel power to the capacitors of the stationary facilities. Normally the outpost would have been powered by such a micro gate, but until a time that they had set up a facility to generate energy it would run on back up generators.

After the machines had reached a large enough amount the reproduction would stop and the outpost would be finished before resources would finally be sent back to the station, the whole process would take three weeks if only one was left on the planet, but the crate Roger had received contained thirty six of them and with the half he planet to put on the first planet they'd get resources in just four days.

After setting down the crate inside the jumper Roger got into the pilot's seat and flew it out of the hangar to Veva's ship which was waiting just outside.

"I take it they've filled you in?" Roger said as he got onto the bridge.

"Yes, Luna said the station was out of resources and we're going to gather more." Veva said from the chair in the middle of the bridge.

"Good. How many men are on board?" Roger asked as he got to work on one of the consoles.

"Four. One in engineering and three standing by in the hangar." Veva replied.

"Good, we won't be needing more than a single pilot for this and a set of rings." Roger said.

"We have plenty of rings." Veva said.

"Good, I've uploaded the coordinates we need to get to." Roger said a few seconds before the ship jumped to hyperspace. "Do you know if there's a blueprint for the rings in the ships computers?"

"Yes." Veva said just before she felt someone accessing the file.

"Good, the Alterrans preferred shuttles and so there's no rings or transporter booths on the station, or in the outpost which will be created on the surface when we're done with our task." Roger explained as he tried to work in a set of rings into the blueprint of the outpost the machines would build. "Put I'd prefer to have them in case we need to get out fast."

"I know what you mean." Veva said and made a long pause before continuing. "You know this is going very fast forward, we discovered the station no more than a few hours ago and now you're acting as if you've spent most of your life with the Alterrans, trying to rebuild their empire and all that."

"I'm not trying to rebuild their empire, at least not at the moment, first we need to make sure that our own people are safe and by doing this we'll increase our chances of surviving." Roger explained as they dropped out of hyperspace and he set a way point for the pilot who was flying the fighter with the rings down to the surface.

"But you're not abandoning the idea?" Veva asked as the fighter descended down through the atmosphere of the planet.

"No, I've been thinking. This is my and Luna's mission, there's a chance that Earth exists like we're used to in this reality too, maybe those who doesn't want to be here can settle there if they want to, at least until we can find you a way home." Roger said as the fighter came into the lower parts of the atmosphere.

"Some of the men might accept that, they've lost many of their comrades and even if it's not our Earth, so to say, it's better than flying around in space, risking getting blow out of the sky at every turn." Veva said as the fighter dropped the rings.

"Well talk about it later." Roger said as he got up and walked away with the crate to the closest rings which he used to ring down to the planet.

On the surface of the planet, which had a barely breathable atmosphere, Roger begun to remove half of the small machines from the crate, planting their three legs in the ground so that the central drill would be able to reach the ground. When he'd placed them all on the ground outside the rings he activated the rings and returned to the ship.

"My pilot is already on his way back with the rings." Veva said as Roger returned to the bridge.

"Good." Roger said as he activated the miners who's drills begun to carry them into the planets crust within a few seconds.

"So can we continue our conversation now?" Veva asked.

"Sure. I know what you mean and that's why I think it might be a good idea." Roger said as he input several new sets of coordinates into the computer from merory. "Here's the remaining eighteen planets we're going to visit before we're done."

"We better get on our way then." Veva said as her pilot returned to the ship.

Several hours later Roger returned to the control room with the now empty crate thrown over his shoulder while he read through the information each miner was sending back through subspace.

"What have you got?" Roger shouted as he saw the mass of crates positioned down in the gate room.

_"Weapons mostly, quite a lot of miners too, a dozen or so crates full of raw materials and three sets of Alterran gear." _Luna replied as she opened a crate which was standing right in front of the gate. _"Dax figured out that everything has been stored in the outgoing buffer of the gates we dial and when it dials back it releases the content into the matter stream."_

_ "So where is he then?" _Roger asked as he helped her push the crate to the side.

_"I gave him a room and told him to get some sleep." _Luna said.

_"That's not a bad idea for us too." _Roger said.

_"__Sounds good." _Luna said as she grabbed his arm and pulled him up to one of the crates. _"But first we should gear up."_

_ "So what have we got?" _Roger asked as she removed the lid on two crates.

_"__Standard Alterran rifle, shield and amplifier bracelets, subspace uplink with holographic interface and lastly a subspace communicator." _Luna said and handed him a rifle and two bracelets just like the ones he'd used in the simulations, then she gave him two forearm guards and a headpiece. _"There's also __some clothes, but nothing which fits us."_

_ "This will do fine." _Roger said as he put on the forearm guards and the bracelets. _"Do we know anything about the power surge yet?"_

_ "Yea, the engineers think that the original caretaker of the station tried to take it back from the one we brought with us." _Luna said as they put the lids back on.

_"__You buying that?" _Roger asked a bit sceptical.

_"__Yea, they know what they're talking about, at least after a short explanation from me about the Vis and the Ais we used to use and a lot of reading through the manuals." _Luna said.

_"__And the rest of the file, anything new there." _Roger continued.

_"__We've just dialled the caches that we had already found in the file as well as beginning to sort it out, there's strings going between information everywhere, it's an entire database in itself." _Luna said.

_"__I guess we know what to do tomorrow." _Roger said as he mentally ordered the uplink to create a channel to Veva.

"Veva here." She said as a hologram of her head begun to float next to them.

"Get a good nights sleep Veva, we've gotten more miners which will need to be delivered tomorrow." Roger ordered as he and Luna begun to approach his quarters.

"How many?" Veva asked.

"A hundred, maybe more, split over at least fifty planets." Roger said.

"That'll take us a few days to go through. We'll come get the cargo in eight hours." Veva said as she closed the channel.

_"__So where are you sleeping tonight?" _Roger asked as they reached his quarters.

_"__Your bed." _Luna said as she opened the door, at least the caretaker had made sure the two had gotten a nice room with some fresh sheets before he exploded. _"There's two quarters for Alterrans who stay here, this is one, the other is exposed to space at the moment."_

_ "Fine, I'll take one of the Lantean quarters." _Roger said.

_"__The computer won't let you, it'll only let __the owner of a quarter enter and I've already tried to give both of us Lantean quarters, the station won't have any of it." _Luna explained as she dragged him to the bed. _"__Now sleep."_

_ "Take it easy." _Roger said as he lay down in the bed fully clothed and felt Luna's body pressing against his back, after trying to move away from her a few times without success have gave up and let the calm of sleeping descend over him.

Exactly eight hours later he was awoken by Veva's voice coming from his radio. "Come in Major, we're waiting for the cargo."

_ "I'm on my way Veva." _Roger replied half awake as he slid out of Luna's embrace and got out of the room.

"What?" Veva asked in confusion.

"I said I'm on my way." Roger replied as he picked up all of the crates which contained the miners using telekinesis while he sent a list of planets to Veva's ship. "You should have gotten a list of planets, place two miners on every planet and then move on to the next until you run out of either. We're running on data which is a few billion years old, so if the planet has life of some sort or isn't there just move on to the next and if you see any kind of ship run before they can see you, we're not ready for a war just yet."

"You might have said so in Ancient, but I don't speak it." Veva replied by the time Roger had reached the hangar. "Got it, stealth is our focus."

"Sorry, I'm a bit tired." Roger said as he removed all but one datapad from the crates, linking all the miners to the one he left with them. "There's a single datapad in the cargo, it'll allow you to activate them after they've been placed."

"I've got it." Veva said as Roger sent over the crates with the help of the rings. "We'll be back in a few days."

"Don't come straight back here Veva, take a detour to shake of anyone following you." Roger ordered.

"Got it." Veva said as she sent the ship into hyperspace.

Four uneventful days later a mini gate activated deep in the bowels of the station and the first load of resources came through, no more than a wheelbarrow but still enough that the ancient machinery once again begun to work, sending the resources to the machines which would spit out hundreds of repair bots over the coming days. Another two days and the docks came to life to restore Atlantis to its former glory, on pier at a time. The day after Veva returned just to get another load of miners and a new list of planets.

In the same manner another eight weeks flew by as the amount of resources that came in begun to far exceed the amount the station could use, even when Atlantis own industrial area sprung to life and begun to create spare parts for itself which after a while could be seen moved by hundreds of small repair bots. Only another two weeks later when both the station's and Atlantis shipyards begun to build ships did the flow of resources begin to match the need, but by then Roger had already begun to plan for the next phase.

After reading through everything he could find on the enemies they would face there he knew they couldn't do it on their own, they needed armies who could occupy entire planets by simply standing on every centimetre of ground and fleets large enough to blockade entire solar systems. They had neither of those things and far from enough resources to support that.

This wasn't just the Gaoa'uld, the Ori or the Wraith all over again, this was worse than if the three had been working together. When the Alterran had left the galaxy there had been four major races who each controlled more or less of one galaxy each, two major races which had controlled two or more galaxies with presences in a few others, the greatest of the twelve minor races had at most controlled a sector of a galaxy while the four weakest of the races had all been sharing a single planet because they hadn't needed more than that.

The Alterrans themselves had at their hight of power controlled and managed four galaxies, that number had gone down to less than one after the Empire had attacked them before going up to two during their war with the other races. Now the other races had had a lot of time to prepare and expand so there was no telling what was waiting for them once they stepped outside the safety of the station and revelled themselves.

With large enough numbers automated androids would do the trick, but that still required resource which he didn't have. Their current galaxy already held over a hundred of their resource bases and that was already a bit much for such an old galaxy which had only a few million planets left, they would need a clean galaxy which they could exploit without the risk of anyone ever noticing them and the key to that was Destiny, if it existed in this reality then its database would hold information about more galaxies than Roger could count to.

Which was why Roger was standing in the control room in the middle of the night with three hyperspace capable probes and a power booster standing next to the gate, the later of which where hooked up to the gate.

While most stargate networks used the Milky Way standard glyphs the Alterrans had walked their own path and so their stargates used all kinds of symbols as glyphs. Though still using the standard number of glyphs four of them had been replaced by special functions, first was a plain white square which was used as the point of origin no matter where the gate was, then there was the galaxy selector which was used after a four glyph address to change the target galaxy, then a sector selector which came after a single glyph to chose which part of a galaxy but what came last was what he really needed.

Despite going their own way the Alterrans had at least thought that maybe one of their gates would have to be used to dial the other kind of gates, so the forth special glyph was used to flip the glyphs to the normal Milky Way glyphs, which was otherwise on the backside of the gate, thereby allowing the gate to dial the normal gates.

So by first switching glyphs, entering the address, switching back and entering the point of origin he managed to create a stable wormhole to Pegasus before throwing through the three probes as quickly as he could, just barely managing to get them through before the power booster caught fire and the gate shut of, the only trace of what he'd just done was a pile of ash which he spread out with his mind so no one would notice.

Each of the three probes had a set goal, one was to find Atlantis, one P4X-351, the planet which had housed project Icarus and the last was to seek out the Asgard in Ida, should they still live.

Atlantis because he needed the address to Destiny, P4x-351 because he needed power and the Asgard because the needed their technology, their hyperdrives, their transporters, their beams, hell he needed most of their stuff to make up for the Alterrans ignorance in some areas of technology.

It would take time but the probes would do their job, they would seek out their targets while he prepared the next part of his plan.


	5. Chapter 5

Several days after he'd sent the probes through Roger received a short subspace message from each probe, Atlantis had been located through massive subspace activity around the planet. Both Orilla and Othala had been confirmed destroyed by the probe whom had raced through hyperspace ever since it left the space gate behind in Pegasus, it was now carrying out it's secondary programming, assisting the third probe with finding P4X-351.

He still didn't have anything of value to trade for the information Atlantis possessed so he ordered the first probe to stay in close proximity to Atlantis until he could give it further instructions.

As the days blended into each other the first of the Alterran ships of the new fleet was coming to life as it's generator was activated and it moved away from the dry dock under its own power. The ship was of a design almost as old as the Alterran race, most would consider it to be redundant. Its weapons where several dozen weak plasma cannons, its shields where barely stronger than those of a Ha'tak and a Wraith hive would be running in circles around it in both hyperspace and at sublight. But for all of these flaws there was one reason as to why the Alterran had chosen to use it without modifications through out their history, its hull. It would resist almost anything natural without a scratch, it was ten times the strength of the Naquadah, Trinium and Carbon hulls the Asgard used and half of the energy in any energy projectile would be sent directly to the shields.

During their glory days the Alterran had used far superior vessels in combat, but still this Aurora shaped type had remained as the vessel of choice for the small shipyards of all the science outposts, the only blueprint saved in their databases, so for now it was the only ship which Roger had the ability to build, at least until he could get his hands on a bigger shipyard and some blueprints. But a ship was a ship after all and it could be useful if they needed to defend themselves.

Shortly after another four identical vessels where finished in other docks on both the station and Atlantis before Roger shut them down, both the city and the station had been restored to prime condition but they didn't have the man power to even make full use of either let alone a fleet, that however was about to change as Dax came running into the control room to find Roger.

"I've got it working." Dax shouted as he came running into the control room.

"What Dax?" Roger said a bit sceptically.

"The android we got from reality number nine." Dax said.

"Oh, thought you'd given up on that." Roger said as he saw the android coming after Dax.

"I did, its memory core was beyond repair, but there was a secondary core, a programming core, it just needed to have a set of orders in the memory core to function." Dax said as the android stopped next to them. "So I slaved it to one of the minor VIs in the database which is now in control."

"If there's Vis in the database then why aren't we using one as a caretaker?" Roger asked.

"They're to dumb to take be caretakers, they're closer to true AIs than the Vis we have in the database, but that's beside the point." Dax said. "We should be able to download a copy of the VI in the database into the memory core of the android to get an automated worker."

"So what are you waiting for, we're not creating any more ships because we don't have anyone to crew them." Roger said. "Just have them built already."

"Well I can't, it doesn't recognise me as either a Lantean commander or an Alterran. So I can't order the station to built them." Dax said. "We lowly humans can only view things in the system, we can't do anything really."

"I'll see what I can do about that, you should have just told me as soon as you had the problem." Roger said. "But if you get me some blueprints for that android I will have the station create them right now."

"We didn't want to bother you, and we could still do some things with those datapads which came from the miner's crates." Dax said.

"Well either way I'll see if I can fix that." Roger said. "But I'll need you to do some alterations to it for future models, add some holographic projectors so we can project an image of the one in control over the frame and then see if you can find a way for them to be controlled directly from a control chair, there's one in the basement if you need to interface with one directly, just tell me if you need to access it."

"I didn't even know the station had a chair, but what would you even need those things on an android?" Dax asked.

"We haven't used the chair yet since we can control the station just fine from here and I'll need those things because it's a good way to keep safe while still allowing people to see the controllers face." Roger said, telling half the truth.

"I might be able to create something, but it'll take me a few weeks at least to create what you want." Dax said.

"Good, how long range will it have?" Roger asked as he begun to rethink his plans.

"Well I guess we'll be using subspace to transmit, so I can't see that becoming a problem unless you want to field them far away." Dax replied.

"Well I already know that we'll be fielding them in multiple galaxies so I need it to function over a distance of several billion light years." Roger said.

"The size of a transmitter and receiver that would work over such a distance would be to large for it to be useful, but I guess that we could put a relay on board the ship that deliver them to the planet." Dax said after some thinking.

"Great, I want the blueprints for a combat android with said additions, as well as for a ship to deliver them with, on my desk in two weeks." Roger said. "They don't need to be perfect, they just need to be working, a working prototype if you will."

"You want a ship designed in two weeks?" Dax said surprised. "I can't do that."

"Think jumper but more tightly packed with a fast hyperdrive and I'll be happy." Roger said.

"A fast hyperdrive? Are you kidding me? The ships the station and Atlantis have managed to create are flying snails." Dax said.

"Yea, huge flying snail, what would happen if you placed those engines on the back of a puddle jumper? A thousand of the mass but the same power to push it forward, imagine that speed." Roger said.

"I see your point though hyperspace doesn't really work that way." Dax said. "But you might have a point. I'll see what I can do."

"Great. So do you have a blueprint for the current generation of androids?" Roger asked.

"Right here." Dax said and handed him a datapad.

"Great, I'll have production up in an hour." Roger promised as he sent away the blueprint to be created. "Now excuse me but I've got to go and fix that permission problem for you."

"I'll have the ships and androids ready in two weeks." Dax said as he watched Roger disappear through a door which he'd never managed to open himself.

Behind the door was an elevator which lead to a part of the station which was a restricted area to everyone but the Alterran and it was there that the good stuff could be found, including one piece of technology he would need. Despite once being dedicated to the study of dying stars the station still held the capability to study just about anything, including genetic mutations and ways to cure them, so it held the Alterran version of the genetic manipulator which was identical in every way to the one created by the Ancients and later used by the Goa'uld.

With it's help he could fix the permission problem. He'd already been aware that the station restricted access to some areas so that only he or Luna could enter and he'd tried to change that, but not even he could access and change the station working parameters, it accepted him as an Alterran but not as its commander. So the only way to give them access to the station would be to make them into Lanteans, thankfully the station had kept record of everyone who had ever set its foot on the station, so he only needed to find out what parts of the DNA would need to be changed to make someone a Lantean. Making the entire crew Alterran was out of the question as even ascended beings had trouble advancing someone to Alterrans.

By the end of the day what Roger had thought would be rather easy turned out to be far more difficult than imagined and it took him another twelve days until he felt that he had found all the changes he would need to make to the crews DNA. So after a quick nap he sought out Dax who'd fallen asleep at a console with his datapad in his hand.

"Evacuate the facility, this is not a drill." Roger screamed from the top of his lungs.

"What the hell?" Dax shouted in panic as he grabbed the datapad and dashed towards the exit.

"You should have seen the look on your face." Roger said as he brought Dax back to the console with his mind while he laughed.

"Not funny Major." Dax said as he sat down on the chair and rubbed his eyes.

"I thought so." Roger said as he pulled a chair for himself from the other side of the room. "But either way I've found a way around the permission problem permanently."

"So lets trade then, I've got those blueprints for you somewhere around here." Dax said as he begun to search through his datapad.

"Great. Just a little warning tough, my solution might not be the easiest one." Roger said as Dax brought up the blueprints on the datapad.

"There you go." Dax said as he sent the blueprints to Roger's datapad. "So what do you mean about it not being the easiest solution?"

"I might as well show you." Roger said.

"Lead the way then." Dax said as he got up.

From the console Roger led Dax through winding corridors until the later knew he was lost.

"Through this door is the Alterran section, you won't be able to enter or leave this part of the station unless either I or Luna is accompanying you." Roger said as he opened a door.

"So what's so special about this place then?" Dax asked as he stepped through.

"Nothing really, just that most of the scientific equipment is found here no matter if it's used or not." Roger said as the door closed behind them. "Mostly though it seems to have been used by the Alterrans to get away from the Lanteans and get some peace."

"So why are we here then?" Dax said as they stepped through another door into the room Roger had spent the past two weeks in.

"We need this." Roger said and pointed at the genetic manipulator. "I'm just considered a normal Alterran, so I can't tell the station to give you access to its systems, but the Lanteans have access to most of the stations systems."

"So you're going to do as the Goa'uld and changes humans?" Dax said surprised.

"No I'm going to advance you, I've spent almost two weeks mapping out the differences between human and Lantean DNA so I'm pretty sure that it'll work." Roger said more confident than he felt.

"Well if you're sure it'll work then I guess we might as well start with me." Dax said as he stepped up onto the podium. "You've yet to do something which haven't been too bad for the men in the long run."

"Well I'm not really entirely sure since you're the first." Roger said as he activated the machine.

"To late to turn back now I guess." Dax said as he watched the holographic representation of his DNA change for a minute. "But that looks like an awful lot of changes."

"I've added some changes which might not have been necessary for the station to recognise you as Lantean, but it'll all improve your body and mind in some ways." Roger assured him as the machine shut of. "It might take a few days for it to spread to every cell of your body, but it should do for now."

"So should we begin to treat the rest?" Dax asked.

"No, we wait and make sure your changes happen as they should." Roger said.

"So how long?" Dax asked as Roger led him back out of the Alterran section.

"At least a week." Roger guessed as they returned to the control room.

"Well then I guess I can only wait." Dax said as he moved of to return to his workplace.

"Yea, but try to stay close to someone at all times in case something happens." Roger ordered before he too returned to work.

First he checked up on Luna, since she'd found a small training area she'd spent most of her time there, trying to improve her combat skills, at times she'd used the Destiny style control chair to rerun the simulated battles in the hopes that she'd get better results. At the moment she was running the first simulation and was just about to open the door when Roger decided to mess with her a bit and changed the simulation so that one of the dead enemies came to life behind her.

He then went on to check the status of his three probes which he'd neglected while he'd been working on the DNA. The two probes searching for P4X-351 had yet to find it. But the single probe which was keeping an eye on Atlantis had detected multiple hyperspace windows around Atlantis shortly before large amounts of smaller energy signatures had been detected in the system, most likely a battle, no less than four times. As soon as he'd determined that it had indeed been a several battles in the Lantean system roger shut down the link to the probes and hurried of back into the Alterran section of the station only to emerge four hours later with what looked like a huge balloon under each arm.

Two hours after that one of the newly constructed drop ships emerged through the roof of the control room as Roger begun to hook up another power booster to the gate and one of the few working androids begun to dial the gate to Pegasus. The few android memory cores Dax had loaded with VIs Roger had taken to the six androids in the drop ship and to the other three androids which where performing various tasks around the station.

As soon as the event horizon snapped into place the drop ship flew through quickly followed by the balloons which Roger pushed through at a minimal velocity so that the planets gravity would be able to pull them down as soon as they came through. On the other side of the gate that was exactly what happened as the two drop pods begun their decent down to the surface, when the two pods hit the atmosphere of the planet it sent a loud bang through the atmosphere of the planet when they broke through the sound barrier and their forward shields came to life to protect them from the massive build up of heat. Upon impact the two pods drilled themselves deep into the ground before they opened and let out the eight miners which had been placed inside each pod.

About the same time as the pods entered the atmosphere of the planet Roger pushed through another six pods as the drop ship performed a hyperspace jump towards Atlantis. The small size and mass of the jumper did mean that the ship had a much higher top speed than the large ship with the same engine, but it would still take the small craft almost five days to reach Atlantis, which was less than one jump away for a Wraith Hive. It was far to slow for his liking, but he didn't have any other choice but to wait for it to arrive.

"So where's that leading through?" Luna asked from the control room as the power booster burned up and the gate shut down.

"Pegasus." Roger said without blinking as Luna came down into the gate room and slapped him hard.

"That's for messing with my run." She said before calming down. "I though that we had left that and the Milky Way behind us?"

"We had, but we need blueprints for better ships or at least better equipment for our ships and you need to learn to adapt to changes." Roger said.

"My people had might ships." Luna said defensively.

"Yes, they had, but we don't, we don't even have the blueprints to create mightier ships." Roger said. "Your people are gone Luna and frankly I find their ignorance in some areas a bit disturbing."

"My people where the greatest race to ever live." Luna shouted.

"That may be, but the Empire managed to almost wipe them out, we'd be fools not to go after any technological advantage that we can get, at least until we can reclaim the few facilities and planets which are still standing." Roger said.

"I thought this was the last one?" Luna said in surprise.

"I take it you've been too busy training to check it out?" Roger said. "There's at least one military station and two shipyards left spread into the other three galaxies as well as the Kolob system and Hyperborea. The only reason I've yet to reclaim them is that their internal sensors shows movement inside. When we're ready to reveal ourself to the universe we will attack all of the stations at once and then quickly move them away when we've won. Appart from those I'm getting responses on your old subspace channels which point to others in worse condition, but I'll leave them for now."

"I've left the thinking to you." Luna said as she calmed down.

"Well now you know how I've been thinking, I'm hoping that we can trade some of our resources for some of their technology or access to the Asgard core. Maybe some of our guns would be fine too." Roger said.

"What's an Asgard core?" Luna asked.

"A race called the Asgard gave their knowledge to Earth by installing a database on one of Earth's ships, we call that database the Asgard core." Roger explained.

"Sounds useful." Luna said as she turned around and walked away. "If you interrupt one of my simulations again I'll be aiming my weapon at you instead."

"I don't make promises I can't keep." Roger shouted after her as she left him standing there with the pile of ash from the power booster.

Five uneventful days later the small drop ship left hyperspace above Atlantis and was greeted by two Auroras. Back on Omega Seven Roger was sitting in the control chair and activated the holographic projector on one of the androids before he opened a channel from the drop ship to Atlantis.

"Ah, Dr. Weir." Roger said as he saw her on the other side of the channel.

"Do I know you?" Dr. Weir replied as she tried to recall the face that was projected over the android.

"No you would not know me here, but I am happy that it is you and not that man called Woolsey." Roger said, watching Weir's expression changes to a frown.

"Colonel Sheppard is keeping that man and his forces far away from Atlantis." Dr. Weir responded.

"I did not realise that there had been a split in the Atlantis expedition." Roger apologised.

"You know both my and my enemies name, yet you do not know we are at open war?" Weir asked sceptically.

"Open war? That was not known to me. I take it that it's the IOA against the SGC?" Roger said, thinking back to the days before the SGC had broken free from the IOA in his reality.

"It's between Earth and the SGC. But I've already told you far more than General O'Neill will be happy with." Weir said. "Why are you in this system?"

"It's good to hear that the old man is still around, even if there's a war going on." Roger said. "I'm hear to trade with you, among other things."

"I'm listening." Weir said.

"Well if you're at war then I take it you need resources and as you may have noticed I'm a little out of the loop. So as a sign of good faith I'm sending you the gate address of a planet which have a large cache of raw materials at the coordinates I've also transmitted." Roger said as he transmitted the gate address to his mining outpost in Pegasus. "It's yours, all I ask is that you do not land anywhere else on the planet or try to scan anything but the area around the cache. In exchange you tell me as much as you think it's worth about what's happening in Pegasus and the Milky Way."

"If you just wanted to trade then why didn't you simply dial the gate?" Weir asked as she motioned for two teams to go through the gate to the address.

"Long distance calls through the gate are rather expensive and I would have already burned through several ZPMs if we had been using those." Roger said. "Plus they only last thirty-eight minutes and the resources wouldn't have been there if I had called you five days ago when this ship was launched."

"You're telling me you're coming from another galaxy?" Weir said stunned.

"Not only that, I'm currently in another galaxy Dr. Wier, one far far away from you." Roger said as he shut of the hologram and let the androids face show for a second before he turned it back online. "This android I'm speaking to you through is simply because I know it'll be easier to speak to something which looks human."

"Then why would you bother to seek us out? What happens here would not affect you would it?" Weir asked.

"Two reasons Dr. Wier, I care about what happens in your region of the universe because I originally came from Earth and because some of my men wish to return to Earth, or at least Tau'ri soil." Roger explained. "Those are the reasons I'm here peacefully."

"If you are from Earth then how come you're in another galaxy now and what other reasons do you have to be here?" Weir asked.

"I come from another reality Dr. Wier, I'm sure Dr. McKay can explain how it works." Roger simply said as he saw Dr. Weir talking into her headset. "My other reasons to being here is that I need some things, since you're here I'll get what I need by trading."

"General O'Neill personally thanks you for your gift and has ordered me to tell you everything you could want to know." Weir said as she turned back. "I'm also free to make any deals with you that would benefit us."

"I knew he would come around. So lets start, why is there a war going on?" Roger asked.

"The IOA first wanted to get Atlantis back to Earth when we found fourteen ZPMs and eight Auroras on an Ancient planet. General O'Neil refused and the entire SGC was driven of world by IOA forces, but not before they managed to capture six of the 304s Earth had. Shortly after we declared our independence from Earth, that's when Earth sent Woolsey after us." Weir explained. "We've been holding out here while General O'Neil and the rest of the SGC have tried to fend of the Goa'uld and what ships Earth have sent after them."

"It's sad that things have happened like that." Roger said. "Do you have the ability to produce your own ships?"

"No, we're counting on the eight ships we have." Weir said.

"Then here's an offer for you. Blueprints for Asgard hyperdrives and transporters for a fully functional and automated shipyard." Roger said.

"Your ship took five days to travel from that resource planet to Atlantis, so I take it you dialled a gate to get there, if you can show us how to build something which can power the gate for an intergalactic connection too then we have a deal." Weir said after some thinking.

"That's acceptable." Roger said as he ordered the stations machinery to create almost a million builders, similar to the miners but meant to build only, while also ordering Atlantis to begin the creation of parts for the shipyard in pieces large enough to fit through the gate. "It'll take a month before the shipyard is finished, but the blueprints for the power booster and three prototypes can be shipped to you within the hour. I must warn you however that they'll self combust when they run out of energy."

"Noted." Weir said.

"Second offer I have might seem strange. I either need the address to Destiny or if you have already gotten men aboard the ship I will need information from her database about every galaxy within, let say five hundred million light-years of my own galaxy." Roger said.

"Might I ask why you would need that information?" Weir asked.

"We're deep in enemy territory, but thankfully we've yet to be detected. Soon I will be going to war but I need resources in far greater amounts than I could get from this galaxy without being detected. I hope that Destiny have collected information about at least a dozen or so galaxies nearby. In addition I need to know the fate of the Asgard and if they did indeed leave a database behind for you I'll need to get access to it."

"And what would you be willing to trade for this?" Weir asked.

"Anything. I've seen that your men are using P-90s, I could offer you energy weapons used by the Ancients or hand you the resources of an entire galaxy when I've gotten it all set up." Roger offered.

"Well if you are serious about all of this then I'm sad to say that you can't reach Destiny, the only known planet capable of dialling Destiny was destroyed many years ago and the communication stones are still on Earth." Weir said. "The Asgard core is also out of reach on the Daedalus which is still controlled by Earth."

"Let me worry about reaching Destiny, just get me that address." Roger said. "It's a shame about the Asgard core though, the Asgard had some rather useful things."

"I'm sure we could let you take a look at what's in the core if you help us reclaim it." Weir offered. "Do that and you will get the address to Destiny."

"To gather enough resources to dare attack anything I will need the information about those galaxies or many years will pass before I will be able to take action." Roger said.

"How about this? You give us a way to dial Destiny and we will make sure you get your information." Weir said.

"We will see." Roger said. "I've yet to obtain a way to Destiny, but I am sure I will have it in my possession soon."

"You know of a way then?" Weir asked surprised.

"Yes." Roger said.

"Then give us access to that way and you will have your information." Weir said.

"All in due time Dr. Weir." Roger said as he got some of the androids to prepare four power boosters and a datapad with the promised blueprint. "For now I suggest we exchange what we've decided upon and when I have secured a path to and from Destiny I will contact you again."

"Not until we have the shipyard will we give you anything." Weir said.

"That may be so, but since you are already at war you need what I have offered you as soon as you can." Roger said as the androids hooked up one of the power boosters and dialled the gate to Atlantis. "Your three power boosters and a datapad with the needed blueprint are coming through the incoming wormhole which should be forming on your end in a moment."

"You need to be more careful next time, we barely had time to lower the shield. But they've just come through." Weir said as the gate shut down. "We thank you."

"Dr. Weir, I know more about Ancient technology than you could imagine, I sent an override code for the shield just before the items." Roger said. He'd checked the blueprints for several of the over six thousand complete blueprints for Atlantis and they all had the exact same override code hard-wired into the gate's shield, sadly though no blueprint for Atlantis had the had more than one gate even if the mechanism for changing gates where there. "It's built into the city itself so there's no use trying to change it either, I just wanted to show you that I can enter the city should I chose to. But for now I would be happy if you allowed my ship to land on one of the piers so that your shield can protect it, should the Wraith return."

"After that little show of yours I guess there's no real use in refusing." Weir said. "You may land it on the western pier."

"Thank you Dr. Weir. I will contact you as soon as the shipyard is ready." Roger said as he shut of the channel.

The moment he shut of the channel to Atlantis Roger got out of the control chair and hurried to the control room where Luna and Dax where waiting. He knew he'd been rude to Dr. Weir, but he didn't have time to be kind at the moment, he needed to be effective not kind.

"So what was that?" Dax asked and pointed at the ash pile the androids where cleaning up.

"I've made contact with the Atlantis expedition, there's been a fall out between Earth and the SGC, I've chosen to assist the SGC with raw materials and the blueprints needed to create power boosters. I've also begun to create a shipyard for them so that they may create a fleet of their own." Roger explained quickly. "Of course I'm not counting entirely on their good will, I told them that it'll be done in a months time, but by that time we will already have been able to manufacture two so that we may be able to begin creating our own fleet to station there."

"Why bother with them at all?" Dax asked.

"Destiny, it has information about plenty of untouched galaxies which we can turn into large mines. But we need its address and a white gate or a naquadah core planet." Roger said.

"Then there's the fact that the hyperdrives we have access to right now are far to slow for our needs." Luna added.

"That too." Roger said.

"So how are we going to go about doing this then?" Dax asked.

"I'm thinking android controlled scouts which find us a suitable universe were the Ancient launched Destiny and placed a white gate on it which we can dial from another white gate, then we send through a third white gate and place it on a vessel with a reality drive so we can send it back here and dial it from a forth white gate which we can take here." Roger said.

"Let me guess you want me to design you some scouts?" Dax asked.

"Well if you wouldn't mind Dax then yes I would like you to do that, but leave the hyperdrives for last, we'll wait until we have the Asgard hyperdrives before we launch them." Roger said.

"Well I've seen some kind of probes in the database, with some modifications I can probably have it jumping between realities. But it'll take them quite some time to build up power for reality jumps with the technology we have." Dax said.

"Make them so they carry enough of a charge to jump away and back here again fast then charge up." Roger said.

"Leave it to me Major, I'll get it done." Dax said as he begun to work on his datapad while he walked away.

"Come back here Dax." Roger said as he activated the station wide speakers. "Can everyone please come to the stations gate room?"

"What?" Dax said as he came back.

"Time to let everyone know what's happening." Roger said. "That includes your advancement."

"Oh, ok." Dax said as he sat down on the stairs between the control room and the gate room.

Thirty minutes later the last of the men arrived in the gate room.

"Thank you for coming here so fast." Roger said from the balcony which overlooked the gate room. "As most of you know by now we're occupying a station which was built by the Alterrans who fled to this reality when their own was ripped apart by one of their experiments.

What you probably don't know is that one of the ascended Alterrans came to me just before they where killed defending us and advanced me so that I'm now an Alterran myself, the price for this was that I should rebuild their civilisation to its former glory."

"Prove it!" One of the men shouted. In response Roger pointed his hand at the man and lifted him two meters above the hands of the others.

"I know some of you want to return to Earth, sadly I can't let you do that at the moment since we don't know where our own reality is and the Earth in this reality is at war with the SGC and the Atlantis expedition." Roger said as he lowered the man back into the group. "The IOA drove the SGC from Earth after the later refused to return Atlantis to Earth. I don't know about you but when Earth wants to go and abandon Pegasus while the Wraith are still at large they turn into the bad guys. Therefore I've chosen to assist the SGC in their struggle to reclaim Earth.

I understand if some of you want nothing to do with a crusade against Earth. I will try to arrange for you to return to Earth when the IOA have been driven of but for now I can arrange for you to stay at Atlantis without any requirements for you to take part in the ongoing war if that is what you want.

The other option is to stay with me and help me and Luna in our battle to first restore Earth to its right state and then restore the Alterrans to power. As most of you will have noticed by now you have little access to the stations systems, this is because you are humans, I have tried to fix this but the only way you can currently get access to the stations systems is if you chose to undergo the same procedure as Dax went through only five days ago. To put it simple it will advance your body and mind to match those of a Lantean.

My mission when we got lost was to get us all back to Earth and to keep you all safe. I've come to accept that we may never find our way home and therefore the mission changed to only staying alive and keeping you safe. But as I am now an Alterran my personal mission is now to restore my race to their former glory and feel that I therefore no longer can stay in charge of those that chose to remain human, instead the highest ranking one who chose to remain human will take charge.

You have five days to decide which path you which to walk, come find me when you're ready."

"You didn't give me the option to chose did you Major?" Dax asked as Roger turned around and walked away from the control room.

"No, I'm sorry about that, I can probably return you to human form if you want." Roger replied as Luna joined them.

"I'm fine, I'll follow you to hell and back." Dax said. "But you seem to be making it up as you go."

"That's because I am." Roger admitted as they entered the Lantean only sector. "But for now we need to get those shipyards done so we can update our own ships with Asgard transporters and hyperdrives."

"If I get to pick apart one of the jumpers I might be able to create a cloak, you could sneak in and just take what you need." Dax said.

"That could be an alternative, the Asgard core is on board the Daedalus which is still controlled by Earth. See what you can do but focus on the scouts for now." Roger said.

"Right I'm on it." Dax said as he turned left while Luna and Roger continued into the Alterran only section.

_ "__So you have a task for me too?"_ Luna asked.

_"__I don't feel that I can boss you around like I do with my men since you're an Alterran too."_ Roger admitted.

_"__Well I'm tired of just training and I think we both know that you're the best leader of us two."_ Luna said.

_"__Well then what can you do Luna?"_ Roger asked.

_ "__Anything." _Luna said.

_"__Great, then you can figure out a way for us to get the VIs inside the android memory cores automatically."_ Roger said.

_"__Sure, how hard could it be."_ Luna said.

_ "__Dax haven't managed to do it yet. We've got six engineers sitting down doing it manually at the moment." _Roger said.

_ "Mark my words, I will succeed." _Luna said as she walked of to find a place to solve the problem in.

Two days later Luna came rushing after Roger who was just about to leave the Alterran only section.

_"Done."_ She said and held out a datapad.

_"With what?"_ Roger asked.

_"I've managed to automate the VI download process."_ She said.

_"Really? That's great."_ Roger said, having already forgotten the task he'd given her.

_"It was easy. The machinery is already able to download the VIs into whatever it's creating, we just didn't use it."_ Luna said.

_"Well that's great to hear."_ Roger said and uploaded the blueprint from the datapad into the machinery.

_ "So what now?"_ Luna asked.

_"Well go read the manual for the DNA resequencer and come find me afterwards. You'll be advancing those who chose to stay with us." _Roger said.

_"I've already done that in order to understand what you did to Dax." _Luna said.

_"Well then, by now some will have decided." _Roger said as they came into the control room.

"There you are." Veva said as she saw the two.

"You've made up your mind then?" Roger guessed.

"Yes, along with everyone else. There's only two of the men who wish to leave, the rest are staying with you Sir." Veva said.

"I'm surprised that so many chose to stay, I was expecting the reverse." Roger said

"There's however one condition to that we have." Veva said. "Even if I have to admit that me and most of the others are a bit sceptical about the whole Lantean thing."

"And what would that be?" Roger asked.

"You've got to get us some entertainment Sir." Veva said. "We're getting bored out here working all the time."

"I'll see to it that we get some movies and books." Roger promised.

"Then we're with you." Veva said.

"Here, have each person pick a time and Luna will be waiting for them right here to begin their advancement." Roger said and handed Veva a datapad. "And don't worry about the process, you saw Dax, he's fine."

"Does she really know what to do?" Veva asked sceptically.

"Nope, but she'll know by the time the first one will be going through the process." Roger said. "But we might as well get started with you right now."

"Sure, what should I do?" Veva asked.

"Come with me." Roger said and motioned for the door before turning to Luna. _"Looks like you've got just under a day to figure out how the machine works, what you need to do to everyone is in the machines memory, don't fuck it up."_

_"__I'll try not to."_ Luna said as Roger lead Veva through the door.

In the following eight days Luna was busy turning the humans into Lanteans while Roger himself was reading up on anything he could find, while blueprints for almost everything couldn't be found in the station's database it did contain thousand of pages of theories behind many advanced technology as well as much information about practical uses for the theories. While the two Alterrans where doing this Dax was piecing together two ships together with Veva, one scout and one larger ship for Veva to use when she tried to get to Destiny.

On the ninth day Roger finished his first own blueprint and sought out Dax.

"How's it going Dax?" Roger asked as the entered the room Dax and Veva where working in.

"Great. We're working in the mothership Veva will be using." Dax replied.

"Sounds good. Do you have time to look at this for me?" Roger said and held up a datapd.

"Sure." Dax said as he got up and walked away from the console.

"I'm going to need your help with a few deliveries Veva, that is if our tame egghead here approves of my design." Roger said.

"Sure." Veva said.

"I'm also going to have to modify the Ori mothership slightly." Roger said.

"Not going to happen." She said without turning away from the holographic ship which floated in front of her.

"I guess it's delivery system number two then." Roger said.

"Well either way would work, but I think number one would be the easiest one." Dax said and returned the datapad. "I'm not sure about the device itself, but with triple shielding and double internal dampeners it might just work. I'm surprised you could design something like this though."

"Alterran brainpower really helped me understand some of the theories I used in that thing." Roger admitted.

"Well it's brilliant. That's if it works." Dax said.

"Just one way to find out. The first one should be done in an hour." Roger said.

"I wish you luck, the hardest part will be to get them inside if you're going with the secondary delivery system. But it will be far easier to produce than if you go with the primary delivery system." Dax said.

"True, but either way I'm going to need your help Veva, so get of your ass." Roger said and lifted her up mentally.

"Take it easy Major." Veva said as she put her feet on the ground and walked up to them. "What do you need from me?"

"To begin with I'm going to need you to pilot the Ori mothership and drop me, a pilot and an engineer of in a jumper." Roger said as he led her out of the room and Dax returned to the console.

"You care to be a little more specific?" Veva asked as Roger to a short cut down into the hangar.

"Well we're surrounded by black holes which contain a massive amount of energy and the blueprint I showed Dax was a black hole tap, a way for us to extract that energy." Roger said as he saw the panic in Veva's face. "We're going to try to plant one such tap in a nearby black hole, it should provide us with almost unlimited power."

"Why didn't the Alterrans use this kind of tap themselves?" Veva asked as they entered the jumper.

"From what I can tell they did use a few, but they relied mostly on solar collectors, like the one powering this station, mostly because at the time there where far more stars than black holes in the galaxy at the time. By now most of the black holes have been absorbed by other black holes and the stars themselves have long since gone supernova or died." Roger explained as he begun to pull out and rearrange control crystals from the roof of the jumper. "It's a prototype so I don't expect it to work, but I hope to learn enough to get the next version in working order."

"And what are you doing right now?" Veva asked.

"I'm rerouteing power from the drones and the sensors to the shields and the drive pods." Roger said as he put back one last crystal and got into the pilots seat.

"So what do you need one pilot and one engineer for then?" Veva asked as Roger flew the jumper out of the hangar.

"The pilot to fly the jumper and then I need to show the engineer how to do it in case it works out, I won't have the time to set every tap myself." Roger explained as he docked with the mothership.

"I see. Leaving the dirty work to us?" Veva said as Roger opened the rear hatch.

"No, there's just far more important things I need to do in the future." Roger said as Veva go out. "I'll be back in just under an hour when I've got the tap and as soon as I am back I want the ship on its way to the closest black hole."

With those words Roger left the hangar and headed back to the station were he waited for the tap to float into space as soon as it was done. When the egg shaped device was ejected from the station into space Roger was there and managed to capture it in the back of the jumper before he returned to the Ori mothership which jumped away only seconds after the jumper was on board.

The hyperspace jump didn't last more than a few seconds, but it was all it took for the huge ship to arrive just a few hundred kilometres from the event horizon of the black hole and Roger to get the pilot and engineer on board the jumper.

"Take the jumper in towards the black hole." Roger instructed the pilot.

"Yes Sir." The pilot responded as he got into the pilots seat.

"I've fitted the tap with a weak sublight drive, so as long as you can drop it of close enough to the black hole it should propel itself the last kilometre or two." Roger explained to the engineer who simply nodded.

"A kilometre is a bit too close for comfort Sir." The pilot said.

"I know the pilot." Roger said. "Which is why I'm here right now, if this prototype works I'll add a larger battery for you. But at the moment I can move it the last kilometres with telekinesis before the drive guides it into place."

"Good to hear Sir." The pilot said as the jumper stopped. "We're five kilometres from the black hole now sir.

"That's still to far, three kilometres is the maximum distance." Roger said.

"Not if we give it a push Sir." The pilot said. "Get that tap outside and get in here Sir."

"Sure, as long as we'll be able to recover it if this fails." Roger said as he opened the rear hatch and lifted the tap outside while the jumpers shield held the air inside.

"You said that you could give if a push with you telekinesis Sir. Hold it statical to the jumper please." The pilot said as he swung the jumper around so that the tap was outside the front viewport.

"Done." Roger said as he grabbed a hold of the tap in his mind.

"Thank you Sir. When I tell you too you give the tap that push you talked about." The pilot said as he positioned the jumper so that they could see the black hole. Then he pushed the drive pods to their maximum for three seconds. "Now Sir."

"I would have never thought of that, great work." Roger said as he watched the tap closing the distance on the sensors while the jumper angled away from the black hole.

"If we could only attach the taps to the front of the jumper then we could do this without any sort of drive on the taps Sir." The pilot said proudly.

"That can be arranged as soon as we can get back to the station." Roger said as he received a small amount of data before the tap was crushed. "Looks like we'll be coming back here again as soon as I can look over this data."

"Yes Sir." The pilot said as they returned to the Ori mothership.

"Might I know what my role here is Sir?" The engineer asked as the ship jumped away.

"For now you observe, the next time you will be in control of the release of the tap." Roger said as they dropped out of hyperspace. "I'll contact you as soon as the new tap is ready for pick up."

"Yes Sir." They both said as they got out of the jumper and Roger returned it to the station.

As he landed he could see Dax waiting for him.

"I heard from Veva that things didn't go according to plan. You need any help improving it?" Dax asked.

"No I'm fine, just concentrate on the important things, I just need something to do while I wait for my plans to unfold." Roger said. "And for your information it went as expected, the tap sent me plenty of data before it was crushed."

"If you say so." Dax said as Roger walked away to return to his work space.

Two weeks later, almost a week after he'd said that the Atlantis expedition would have its shipyard he got an alarm from the drop ship he'd left there that someone was trying to contact the ship, so he hurried away from his work on the sixty-eight version of the black hole tap to get into the control chair.

"There you are." Weir said as he opened the channel.

"Sorry I'm a bit busy." Roger said as he tried to work out how he could increase the power to the internal dampeners without increasing the size of the capacitors of the tap.

"I understand that. I just wanted to know what's the status the shipyard you promised us would be at our disposal almost a week ago." Weir said.

"Oh, yes, the shipyard." Roger said as he checked the status of the components which where sitting in storage in. "There's been some delays, but it's entering the final stages of assembly and should soon be ready, just tell me which world you would like it above and I will have it moved there."

"I'm sending you the address of a planet. Have that shipyard ready in two days or our deal is of." Weir said as Roger received the address and begun to ready the parts for transportation through the gate.

"I promise you that it'll be ready Dr. Weir." Roger said as the androids dialled the gate and sent through the parts needed for one shipyard and plenty of builders to get it done in time.

"It better be, two of our Auroras will be arriving there for retrofitting in two days." Weir said as Roger had the androids dial the gate a second time, this time to a gate in Ida, and sending through the parts for the second shipyard and some builders to finish the project.

"I think a shipyard which you need not feed with resources yourself, only some kind of power is worth waiting another week for Dr. Weir. I do however have a request for you, I have two men who wish to live on board Atlantis rather than stay with me, in exchange for quarters for them and copies of every book and movie you have access to I offer to power your shipyard so that you will never need to worry about power to it." Roger said.

"I didn't know we wouldn't need to use our resources to use the shipyard, but I'm willing to accept your offer." Weir said.

"The resources will be coming from my own mines in the Pegasus and Milky Way galaxy." Roger said. "My men will be waiting in a jumper for you to arrive at the shipyard."

"I promise you that no harm will come to them." Weir said before cutting the link to the drop ship.

As soon as Weir hung up Roger was out of the chair and hurried of back to his workplace, there was nothing he could do to make the assembly go any faster, so he returned to finish the energy beam which would power the tap while it entered the black hole. The tap had gone from being just over a metre in length and half a metre in diameter to being two modules each four metres long and two metres in diameter, the first being the tap itself and the second being the battery which gave it enough power to survive the entry into the black hole. Now he was doubling the size of the battery unit so it would last longer and give of more energy at all times.

Forty hours later Roger and the two men who'd chosen to leave where sitting inside a jumper in front of the station's gate which dialled the gate to the Pegasus shipyard, as soon as the event horizon snapped into place the jumper flew through. On the other side of the gate they saw the four pieces of the shipyard which was being assemble into the finished shipyard. As soon as the gate shut down Roger moved it mentally into place between two of the pieces which where sealing themselves so that the gate was now inside the shipyard itself.

Six hours after Roger had arrived the shipyard's sensors detected two Auroras who dropped out of hyperspace a few hundred kilometres away.

"Welcome." Roger said as he opened a channel to one of the ships.

"Thank you." Caldwell said as a hologram of his face appeared in front of Roger. "I take it that you're one of the men who are going to Atlantis."

"That would be the other two men, as I said they're waiting in a jumper for you to arrive." Roger said as he finished up the gate's shield. "I'm the Alterran."

"I wasn't told there would be anyone else on the station." Caldwell replied as the two ships approached.

"I never said anything about who would be on the station to Dr. Weir." Roger said. "But I understand your concerns. I'm only here to make sure that the shipyard works as it's meant to since I've already messed up the time schedule once."

"We will be sending over Dr. McKay so that he might insure that the shipyard is working." Caldwell said.

"I assume your ships doesn't yet have Asgard transporters?" Roger said as he hooked up a power booster to the gate.

"No, that's why we're going to retrofit these ships." Caldwell replied.

"I will meet him in the hangar then." Roger said as he shut of the transmission after sending docking instructions to the ship. Then he hurried of to await McKay's arrival.

Around a minute later a jumper came flying into the hangar and out of it came McKay and four soldiers.

"Welcome Dr. McKay." Roger said as the five men approached.

"Oh, hello." McKay said. "I'm here to check that the shipyard will do what you promised."

"I'm aware of the Dr. McKay. This way please." Roger said as he led them to the control room, the only room apart from the hangar the humans would have access to. "I've created the shipyard in such a way that it's all automated and only the hangar and the control room is accessible to you just so you wont be fucking up the shipyard. You might be the owners of this shipyard, but I'll be taking care of its maintenances."

"Do you have any idea of who you're talking to?" McKay said as he connected his datapad to one of the consoles.

"Yes, an arrogant scientist who think he knows everything." Roger said as he pulled out the cable from the datapad. "Every system on this station has been translated into English so there's no need for you to use datapads. You can upload your blueprints through the shipyards wireless network."

"I'm not arrogant and I do know much more than you do." McKay shouted.

"Yes, you're arrogant and you know far less about Ancient technology than a real living Alterran." Roger said. "If you try to change something you shouldn't even be touching I'll come and kick your ass out of the station."

"I think we both know that the Ancients died out long ago." McKay said as he tried to upload the retrofitting blueprint for the Auroras to the shipyard.

"The ones who created Atlantis and once lived in this galaxy, but the Alterrans who came from another reality and once lived in another galaxy have returned. How do you think this shipyard was created, it's not human or Asgard technology." Roger said.

"I guess I thought you'd just found one of the Ancients shipyards." McKay said surprised.

"If I did I wouldn't turn it over for you in exchange for Asgard hyperdrives and transporters." Roger said.

"You could have just found more than one shipyard." McKay said as the first Aurora begun came into the shipyards dry dock.

"You won't get convinced will you?" Roger asked as he opened a channel to Atlantis from his drop ship.

"I've just received word that the shipyard is there, but I'm still waiting on Dr. McKay's report." Weir said.

"He's right here Dr. Weir." Roger said. "I'm sorry that you can't see neither me nor him, but as I don't have access to a control chair at the moment the androids holographic projectors aren't working as it wasn't designed for this."

"I'm more concerned by the fact that you're with Rodney at the moment." Weir said.

"You don't have to worry about Dr. McKay, he's more than a bit annoying but he's at prime health. I've simply come to Pegasus to make sure that the shipyard is working as it should." Roger replied.

"As far as I can tell the shipyard should do what we need it to do." McKay said over Roger's shoulder.

"Good. I'm sending you the blueprints for the items according to the deal." Weir said as Roger received a burst of data.

"Thank you Dr. Weir." Roger said as he got another data burst. "Now that we've both upheld our parts of the deal I need to get back to my own galaxy, it would seem as if one of my projects have finally succeeded."

"Then I will not keep you any longer." Weir said as she cut the link.

"I'm not annoying." McKay complained as Roger headed towards a door.

"Yes you are." Roger said as he stepped through the door which closed behind him to block out the annoying shouts of McKay as he headed back to the gate.

Back on the station Roger hurried up into the control room and begun to check the station's capacitors. Ever since they had arrived the solar collectors around the dying star had been working overtime to feed the station with enough power to keep it going, but now the black hole tap's micro gate was dialling in and more power than the station had received in a year now came through in a matter of seconds. As soon as he'd confirmed that the tap was working as it should and that it showed no signs of being destroyed any time soon he ordered three more to be created before he uploaded the new blueprints to the database of the station.

"So how did it go in Pegasus?" Dax asked as he came into the control room.

"Great, but I see that Veva and her crew have finally managed to get the tap in place, which is probably the best achievement of the new Alterran generation so far." Roger said.

"You're probably right." Dax said as Veva entered the room. "I hope you managed to bring back the hyperdrive blueprints."

"Yes, both that and the transporters." Roger said. "They should help with placing the other two taps."

"Great, I'll see to it that both are built into the scouts and the mothership." Dax said.

"Good, I want you to lead that mission Veva, and take Luna along, she might learn something from it." Roger ordered.

"Sure, it'll take us a few hours to get the hyperdrive and transporters implemented and then a few days to get the first scout built." Veva said.

"Good." Roger said. "Before we can get going with that we'll need to place three more black hole taps, one in Pegasus, one in Ida and one in the Milky Way."

"So you want me to smack a hyperdrive and a transporter into a jumper?" Dax asked.

"No, I'll do that myself. Put a micro gate on the mothership and send the blueprint for it to the Ida shipyard." Roger said.

"Then we're going back to the design room." Dax said as he and Veva begun to leave the room. "I did manage to reverse engineer the cloak of the jumpers by the way."

"Great." Roger replied as he sent the order for six engineers to change the blueprint for their own Auroras so that they had Asagard hyperdrives, transporters and cloaks before they would refit the ones they had.


	6. Chapter 6

A week had passed since Roger had gotten his hands on the Asgard transporters and hyperdrives, which he'd put to great use in the new jumpers. Five of which just dropped out of hyperspace and activated their cloak at the outskirts of the Sol system. From their entry points in the system just outside Pluto the five jumpers led by Roger and Luna angled towards Earth and gained speed. For the mission Roger had reduced the shields and increased the speed of the jumpers so it didn't take them more than four hours to reach Earth.

Still under cloak the five jumpers approached the Daedalus which was holding orbit along with its eight other sister ships around Earth. Had the greed of the IOA not made them break apart the Antarctica outpost for technology the jumpers would have already sent their identification codes to it, but as it where they managed to get through the hangar shields before someone even knew they where there. By the time the alarm went of and soldiers begun to storm the hangar the androids had already left the jumpers, one staying behind to pilot the jumpers out of there, and used their holographic projectors to blend in with the soldiers so that even their Lantean guns looked like P-90s. Roger and Luna meanwhile stayed in the fifth jumper which was hovering close to the hangars roof under cloak since they lacked both cloak and disguises.

When the soldiers begun to leave the hangar to search the rest of the ship Roger and Luna slipped out of the jumper along with the ten androids inside and silently followed a group of soldiers until they where far enough from anyone else that their weapons couldn't be heard by anyone when they stunned the group and moved on towards the Asgard core, when they got to the door leading into the Asgard core one soldier managed to spot the two Alterrans and sound the alarm before he was stunned by two androids who quickly hurried to open the door to the core.

All around the ship a siren was heard but instead of getting orders from the bridge the soldiers on board found their radios to be jammed and those who had an android nearby quickly got stunned while Roger begun to transmit the complete knowledge contained inside the core to the Ida shipyard where the information was transmitted through an open wormhole to Omega Seven. Twenty minutes after the alarm had sounded the last of the soldiers on board had been neutralised and Luna was erasing the log of both the sensors and the internal communication. When they woke up no one would be able to say for sure what had happened or what had been taken.

Another ten minutes and the ship was left running with an ongoing transmission on a discreet subspace channel which would be even harder to detect than the cloaked jumpers which left the ship at the time, as soon as the entire Asgard database had been uploaded to Omega Seven the Daedalus computers would purge everything except the most basic programming needed to keep life-support going and to keep the ship the ship from falling back to Earth like a stone.

The Asgard core contained massive amounts of information but with time and effort he would be able to build synthesizers, plasma beams and anything else the Asgard had possessed, time he had, for the moment, and the effort would come from the thousand of androids on board both Omega Seven and Atlantis who had begun to sort out the things found in the Asgard core the moment Omega Seven received the first transmission.

After the four hour long trip back to the edge of the system the five jumpers entered hyperspace and disappeared without as much as a trace. When the jumpers emerged from hyperspace a few minutes later they where still a few light-years from their target but Roger had anticipated the shortcoming and the mothership which Veva used to recharge the reality scouts soon dropped out of hyperspace behind them.

"Looks like you made it further than you anticipated Sir." Veva said as her face appeared on the jumpers screen.

"Yea, we'd only needed a few more seconds and we wouldn't even need the ride." Roger said as the Aurora shaped ship manoeuvred itself in front of the line of five jumpers while two hangar doors retracted into the ship on its underside. As no one had gotten around to creating any new hulls they used the Aurora shaped hull and simply changed it to match their needs, like this which had hundreds of holes on each side, each big enough for a single scout to dock and recharge in between assignments.

"Well I would still have to take Luna of your hands, the androids might be smart, but she's been to enough realities to recognise trouble when she sees it." Veva said as the five jumpers begun to dock with her ship.

"She's on her way up to you now." Roger said while Luna got out of the jumper and the ship jumped to the closest gate.

"Great." Veva said as they returned to normal space. "I take it you're going back to Omega Seven?"

"Yes, I thought I'd help with going over the information we just stole." Roger replied as the jumpers backed out of the ship and headed down towards the surface of the planet. "Unless you need my help of course."

"Oh no, we're good." Veva replied as the jumper shot through the atmosphere. "We've got a few candidates, but we're still trying to find a reality where we can dial to Destiny. We've managed to collect several white gates from realities where there's no hope of anyone ever needing them."

"Have you managed to locate and analyse the supergate yet?" Roger asked as they approached a newly built facility on the planet.

"No, I've sent out several hyperspace probes to search for it, but as far as I can tell there's no supergate here." Veva replied.

"That's both good and bad, means the Ori either doesn't exist or have yet to arrive in the Milky Way, but it also means we'll have to figure out how to build one ourselves." Roger said as the jumpers landed in the facility's hangar.

"I'm sure you and Dax can figure out how to build one. But I still don't understand why we need a supergate." Veva said.

"Have the scouts on the lookout for supergates while they're out." Roger said as he got out of the jumper and ordered the androids to return to their previous assignments. "We could use the supergates to move our ships to where they're needed a lot faster than with hyperdrives. Personally I only want the insides of the gate so we can build even larger ones, Atlantis is by far the most powerful ship we have in our fleet, if we can move it through a series of supergates to were it's needed in a matter of seconds it could turn the tide of any battle."

"I see your point, but it's only one ship, it can't turn the tide in a war." Veva said as she switched to radio to keep contact with Roger.

"So far there's only one ship in the Atlantis-class yes, but it's on my to do list for later." Roger said as he walked by a large window. On the other side of the window several hundred androids where busy carving out the insides of the rocky moon.

"Sir, our resources are already spread thin as it is, both our material resources and the man power we have are already at their maximum, the androids are great for working but they can't think like a human or a Lantean. We can't even man Atlantis, let alone more of her kind." Veva said.

"That's because Atlantis is built for thousands of people to live in at all times, I'm talking about building a city-ship which can be controlled by one Lantean and a few thousand androids." Roger said as he approached the gate.

"That would still leave us with a fleet of less than fifty ship, admittedly some pretty fuck huge ships, but still." Veva said.

"I've run some simulations and a normal baseline Lantean can successfully control a fully automated city-ship with the help of androids while also sending orders to at least ten ships. We don't need to micro manage every ship, the androids can deal with that, we only need to plan the larger battle and order them to follow our strategies. Sure it won't be as effective as if we had a Lantean on each ship, but I've done the math and it's the way to go." Roger said as he stepped through the gate to Omega Seven. "There won't be any city-ships going into production for at least a hundred years Veva so with any luck you Lanteans will have increased n numbers to at least a hundred or so."

"What?" Veva shouted. "You expect us to breed?"

"Yes I do and considering how you're looking at Private Stevenson I'd say that's not to far away." Roger said as he shut of the gate to prevent Veva from replying.

Back on the recharge ship Luna had just gotten seated and was shifting through the few hundred realities the androids had sorted out as possible candidates when three contacts showed up on the ships incredibly powerful sensors, curtsey of the hulls scientific heritage.

"Get every jumper on the planet deployed now." Veva shouted over to Luna who relayed the order down to the planet while the former human sent a short databurst through subspace.

"There's only the five jumpers Roger just left here." Luna reported as androids streamed to fill the five jumpers.

"With any luck we won't have to fight anyone." Veva said as the five jumpers came shooting up from the planet at full speed.

"Well I do hope you chose to install some weapons on board the ship because we're going to need them in five seconds." Luna said.

"There's only six or seven plasma cannons depending on which direction they come from. The drones inside those five jumpers are our best bet." Veva said as three hyperspace windows opened in front of their ship.

"Are those Ha'taks?" Luna said with a laugh that died out as soon as she saw a bright blue beam jumping out from one of the tips of the pyramid.

"It might be, but that's definitely an APB." Veva said as the large ship rolled to its left to avoid it. "Why aren't those jumpers firing their drones?"

"Roger thought the drones to valuable to have them on the jumpers so they've been replaced with plasma cannons." Luna said as another beam graced the top of the ship and the shields went down. "What's an APB?"

"Without any drones this battle has already been decided Luna." Veva said as she pressed a few buttons before getting out of the control chair as an alarm begun to sound. "APB stands for Asgard plasma beams, their latest weapon before they died out in our reality or at least claimed to do so. Without any traces of the Ori I'm surprised that they even developed it, even if I'm not to surprised they gave Earth everything they had when they died out, I guess things played out differently here."

"No battle's decided until it's over." Luna said as another beam glanced the hull and the shields flickered to life just long enough to save the hull from breaches. "But I guess this is pretty bad."

"Well this one's over now. We're getting out of here." Veva said as she activated the transporter and the two where beamed down just outside the facility.

"This facility can't defend itself, we need to do something Veva." Luna said as she was led into the facility. "It's not even close to being done."

"We don't need it at the moment and it's no more than a weeks work to catch up if we start over." Veva said as an explosion outside rocketed the entire facility. "Looks like the ships self destruct worked, now lets hope the facility's mechanism works as it should."

"Hey, I'm the Alterran so I should be in charge of what happens." Luna said as she was forced through the gate by Veva.

"Well the Major placed you in my care to teach you about managing fleets, ships and anything else I knew, that puts me above you." Veva said as she ran up to the control room and raised the shield before activating the facility's self-destruct which showed up as ripples on the gate's shield.

"What happened?" Roger shouted as he came running into the room.

"Three Ha'taks attacked our ship. With no way of winning against them I chose to sacrifice the ship and the facility so the technology wouldn't fall into the wrong hands." Veva said as the gate shut down.

"Sure the plasma cannons we have are weak but they should be able to handle at least three Ha'taks." Roger said. "Especially with the backup of five jumpers."

"So you got my message?" Veva asked. "Why didn't you send backup?"

"Well three Ha'taks aren't really a threat or so I thought at least." Roger said.

"Neither did I until I found out that the jumpers didn't carry any drones and that the Ha'taks had APBs." Veva said.

"Well that changes things, APBs aren't to be messed with. Thankfully though I just heard from one of the engineers in reverse engineereing that one of their projects have succeeded, the station and Atlantis will be producing drones in a matter of hours, after that we should be able to stock up both the city, the jumpers and the Auroras when ever we need." Roger said.

"We're going to need a hell of a lot more than just drones with those APBs out there, we're going to need proper shields." Veva said angrily before calming down. "But I guess it's better than nothing."

"I agree with you Veva, against APBs drones won't be much help, but as it is they should at least help against the Wraith." Roger said before turning to Luna. "You're rather good with people right?"

"Yes, I'd like to think so, but I think I'm good at a lot of things you tell me I'm not good at." Luna answered.

"Well you see, I think a fresh face might be good. The last few times I've been more than a little rude to Dr. Weir when we've talked. You think you could talk to her maybe offer a dozen drones for a dead world we can mine?" Roger asked.

"I guess so, I don't have anything else to do now that the recharge ship is gone." Luna said.

"Great. I've sent you the city's address and the override code needed to get past their shields." Roger said.

"Just give me a minute to catch my breath before getting my gear." Luna said.

"Take all the time you need." Roger said as he begun to leave the room. "I'll be helping the androids go over the data if you need me."

"I take it you're not used to combat?" Veva said as she sat down next to Luna.

"Well not for real, only simulations." Luna said.

"No matter how many times you do the simulations your first time in combat will leave traces." Veva said. "You should be happy no one died this time, my first time my commanding officer was hit by a mortar shell."

"I guess I should consider myself to be lucky then." Luna said as she got up. "Better get going now."

"How about I come with you?" Veva said as she followed Luna. "I've got nothing better to do at the moment since there's no other ships which needs a captain at the moment."

"Sure, I could use the assistance." Luna said. "We're leaving in five minutes, get your stuff."

Exactly five minutes later the gate begun to spin as Luna returned to find Veva sitting on the stairs.

"Didn't think you meant exactly five minutes." Veva said as she got up and came up to the young Alterran who was sending through the override code.

"I said five minutes, it takes four to get to my quarters and back and then a minute to gear up." Luna said as she took a step towards the gate.

"You really think you'll have to use that on a diplomatic mission?" Veva asked and pointed at Luna's rifle.

"No, but from what Roger told me that galaxy is even worse than the Milky Way, so better be ready." Luna said and handed Veva one of her Lantean pistols.

"With the APBs in Goa'uld hands I'm not to sure about that." Veva said as they lined up in front of the gate. "Ready?"

"I was born ready." Luna said as she stepped through closely followed by Veva.

The military squad Veva knew to expect on the other side of the gate was far from what she expected as they opened fire just a second after they came through on the other side. If it hadn't been for Luna's shield neither would have had the time to jump out of the way of the energy bolts which came flying from the Zat's.

"Major come in." Veva shouted into her radio as they both hid behind the still active gate.

"What is it?" Roger replied camly.

"We're being fired upon, we need backup." Veva shouted into the radio as Luna blocked another blast mentally and returned it to sender.

"I'm sending through the control room androids, but you'll have to make do with them for a few minutes until I can get some more androids to the gate." Roger replied. "There's an android dropship on one of the piers, it might be able to assist."

"We'll take anything we can get Sir." Veva shouted into the radio as she picked of two of their attackers.

"Maybe we should have said we where coming through?" Luna said as seven androids came running through the gate with Lantean pistols raised.

In only a second the tide turned and the two ladies could get out from behind the gate as their unconscious attackers where tied up by the androids.

"It wouldn't have mattered, this isn't Atlantis personnel." Roger said as the Androids transmitted images back to him.

"He's right, this is the IOA emblem." Veva said as she ripped the insignia from the shirt of an unconscious soldier.

"You'll have more androids arriving in a few seconds. Secure the city as best you can and try to find out where they've taken the members of the expedition." Roger ordered. "I'd start with the brig. I've also uploaded all access codes to an android to see if he can get you access to its systems."

"Thank you Sir." Veva said as at least a hundred androids came through the gate. "We'll handle it from here."

"I hope so, take care ladies." Roger said as the gate shut down.

"Lets move out." Veva said as she signalled for four androids to take up formation around them.

"I'll stay here and see if I can't hack into the mainframe." Luna said as she ordered a dozen androids to secure the entrances to the control room.

"You think you can do it?" Veva asked.

"I don't see why not, I've already changed parts of the recharge ships programming, I don't see why this should be any different. You'll have more use of this than me." Luna said as she threw her rifle to Veva.

"I'll take good care of it." Veva said as she ran of into the city with the android army spreading out into every corridor.

Veva didn't get more than two levels down before she ran into resistance and had to get into cover as two Zat bolts came flying into one of the escorting androids who shook it of before repaying the debt with a series of stun blasts which took out two of the four attackers, the other two being stunned by Veva and an android.

Apart from those four soldiers it wasn't until they reached the brig that they faced a single conscious human.

"Who are you?" Weir asked from inside the brig as Veva came into her sight.

"Sergeant Veva." She said as one of the androids got to work on the lock.

"You don't look like one of the IOA grunts and you're definitely not one of our men." Weir said.

"Major Roger sent me to trade with you." Veva said.

"I don't know of anyone by that name." Weir said as the forcefield lowered and the door opened.

"He's the leader of the Alterran." Veva said.

"Does it really matter, she's getting us out of here right?" Sheppard said as he got out of the cell. "We need to get some weapons."

"Our androids are cleaning out the city as we speak. I'd suggest you get to the control room, the path should be safe, but you might want to take this just in case." Veva said as she handed Sheppard her Lantean pistol.

"I've managed to breach the mainframe, the transporters in the secured areas should be active." Luna's voice came over the radio.

"Great work Luna, I'm sending Dr. Weir and some of her staff your way." Veva replied over the radio before turning back to Weir. "I've left someone in the control room so try not to shoot her when you get there, she's currently trying to gain control over the mainframe."

"We'll make sure not to shoot her." Weir said as she headed for the door.

"I'd much rather help with cleaning out the city Elizabeth, if you wouldn't mind." Sheppard said.

"I doubt you'd be able to catch up with the androids, the central tower's been cleaned out and we're bringing everyone to the mess hall." Veva said as the androids reported the eastern pier to be clean a moment before the western was reported as cleaned too. "And there both the western and the eastern pier are done too."

"Have you caught Woolsey yet?" Sheppard asked.

"Yes, he was stunned and captured in the control room." Veva said as the southern pier was reported as clean.

"The mess it is then." Sheppard said as he motioned for four of his men to follow him.

"Don't go to hard on him John." Weir said from the door.

"I can't guarantee anything." Sheppard said as he left the room.

"These four androids will be escorting you and your men back to the control room Doctor." Veva said and motioned towards the androids.

"Thank you Veva." Weir said as the four androids followed her and the people left in the cell out of the room.

When Veva and Luna returned to Omega Seven a few hours later Roger was sitting on the stairs in front of the gate with a number of holograms floating in front of his face.

"What are you doing?" Veva asked.

"I'm trying to get around the blocks the station has so that I might upgrade it." Roger replied as all of the holograms turned red.

"You already know that neither of us have that kind of security access." Luna said as they came up to him.

"I know, but the androids are taking care of the data, Dax is busy with some project he don't want me to know about and there's no one else needing my help." Roger said.

"Well then this might give you something to do." Luna said and handed him a hand written note.

"I take it this is gate addresses to resource rich planets?" Roger asked as he input the addresses into the stations database.

"Well not really, they've lost their gates for some reason, but the Atlantis database claims that they're full of resources, the Lanteans themselves planned to use them in the war." Luna said.

"So we've got no way of knowing if they're still there or not?" Roger asked.

"Not really no." Luna said.

"And how many drones did we trade for this?" Roger said.

"None, we got them as a gift for helping them, plus a deal that for every hundred drone we deliver they'll give us another planet." Veva said.

"So we get a planet which was last visited no less than ten thousand years ago for every hundred drone?" Roger asked.

"No, while most of their ships are tied up fighting either the Wraith or the IOA they've promised to check out each planet before." Veva said.

"Now that sounds better." Roger said. "How did it go with the attack by the way?"

"What does it look like, we managed to clean them out, sadly someone helped Woolsey escape before Sheppard could get to him." Veva said.

"He's not our problem, at least not for the moment. He will be soon enough however." Roger said.

"We'll deal with him when the time for that comes." Luna said as two men came into the control room above with raised voices.

"No no no, if you set it that high it will explode." The first shouted.

"Yes, just like what happened to Dr. McKay, but Dr. Carter theorised that if you adjust the frequency of the field to match that of the energy and then adjust it manually it should work." The second said calmly as they headed towards the door to the Lantean only section. "If we use one of the Vis then no one would have to be even close."

"What's that about?" Roger whispered.

"Probably some of their hobbies, it's not that we don't appreciate the entertainment you got us from Atlantis, but some of us have been taking up some odd hobbies, I think one of them is studying Zero Point energy and the other is studying shields and their matrixes." Veva said as the two loud men left. "Some have also realised that they're more useful if they know something more than how to fire a gun now that we have the androids as labour and soldiers. We're reading and studying what the Alterrans wrote."

"You've got one of these hobbies too?" Roger asked.

"I'm taking a look at what the Alterrans wrote about string theory." Veva said.

"I'm going to have to see if I can find you some more entertainment then cause that's not hobbies." Roger said as he backed away. "But in all seriousness I'm going to have to talk to Dax right now, see if he can get some structure into it. What they talked about sounded eerily like a description of that thing McKay was fiddling with a few years ago."

"You mean Project Arcturus?" Veva said as her face turned white as bone.

"That's the one." Roger said before he ran away to find Dax.

As Roger approached the lab Dax was in he saw a blinding flash coming out of the lab door closely followed by Dax, who pushed Roger into cover just before a fireball consumed the corridor.

"So what can I help you with today Sir?" Dax asked as he helped Roger up from the floor.

"I came to ask you to overlook all experimentation on the station since I heard talks about something which sounded like Project Arturus." Roger said as Dax walked back into the charred lab. "But I'm beginning to doubt if you're the right person for the job."

"Don't tell me you've lost confidence in me just because of one single small explosion?" Dax said as he tried to get one of the consoles in the lab going.

"I wouldn't call that small." Roger said as he mentally pulled a status report of the labs systems.

"You should have seen the explosion I created yesterday, nearly took out a main power conduit." Dax said as thousands of repair bots flooded the room and got to work.

"What where you doing in here anyway?" Roger asked.

"Trying to create one of these." Dax said and pulled out what looked like a miniature ZPM from his pocket.

"So either a shrink ray or a miniature ZPM?" Roger asked as the screens around the lab came to life.

"The later, the Alterrans could probably have built these if they wanted to, but instead they chose capacitors, nano gates, black hole taps and solar panels for their facilities and other generators for their ships." Dax explained. "But it's a bit more complicated than I though to create these, they tend to explode while I try to charge them."

"Now I know why you didn't want me to know what you where doing." Roger said as he examined the small ZPM.

"Yea, exactly." Dax said as he scratched his head nervously. "And you're probably right about someone overseeing the experiments, I'll take care of it, trust me I'm an engineer."

"Trusting you to make sure no one is making something dangerous while you yourself is making miniature ZPMs which explode isn't something I'm going to do." Roger said.

"It's not like someone's getting hurt." Dax replied with irritation in his voice.

"Major to the control room. Major to the control room." Veva's voice came over the stations internal speakers.

"This is Roger." Roger said over the radio as he motioned for Dax to follow and took of towards the control room. "I'm on my way."

"We have a problem Sir." Veva said and pointed to one of the few screens in the room.

"What is it?" Roger said as he tried to find some text on the screen which showed only two red dots.

"I don't know, but an alarm sounded a few minutes ago." Veva said. "But I'd make a guess that it's the stations sensors."

"Looks like you're right." Roger said as he managed to toggle some overlays onto the screen.

"That's not good at all." Dax said after pushing Roger away from the console and begun to calculate the trajectories of the two dots. "They're heading straight for us."

"What's not good Dax?" Roger said as he failed to see what Dax was talking about.

"I was there when the long range sensors of Atlantis activated from a Wraith dart Major, this looks like it's the same." Dax said as he managed to get two lines onto the screen, both meeting just a few kilometres from the station. "This looks the same. Two unidentified ships heading our way."

"How long do we have until they arrive here?" Roger asked.

"An hour, maybe two." Dax said as he moved away. "Atlantis sensors are better at detecting things in hyperspace."

"Then go." Roger ordered as he begun to send the androids to the ships they had. "Get to your ship Veva, take a few thousand androids and try to intercept them if they drop out of hyperspace."

"I'm on my way." Veva said as she ran of after Dax.

_"__Where are you?" _Roger sent out with his mind as he moved of to get his gear.

_"I'm taking a nap." _Luna's reply came a few seconds later.

_"Well get up now, some thing's coming our way and I need you in the stations control chair."_ Roger sent as he came into his lab and got the gear.

_"The station isn't built to be used in battle Roger, there's not really anything I can fire against any attackers unless they come into the station itself." _She replied.

_"The drones, it's still a control chair so you should be able to take control of them." _He sent as he hurried of to the hangar.

_"Give me a minute and I'll get there." _Luna replied as Roger ringed over to Atlantis.

_"I'll be on Atlantis."_ Roger sent as he moved of to the control chair. _"I've sent out Veva with the hope that she'll be able to intercept them, __but __unless they drop out of hyperspace she can't touch them."_

_ "We can deal with two ships Roger, don't worry." _Luna replied as Roger got into the chair and powered up the city's defensive and offensive weapons. _"__With enough power that city can last forever. I actually wish my people would have thought of that in their war, they relied to much on armour and weapons."_

_ "We're not going to make the same mistake Luna, we have the shield and the power needed. It's just to bad we haven't put a micro gate in the city." _Roger sent as he begun to analyse the data that Atlantis sensors where getting. Had someone been manning any console in Atlantis its sensors would have picked up the ships more than a day earlier. _"__Change all production to assisting the fourth production line, __the moment we can we're moving the station to a new location."_

_ "The hyperdrive for the station won't be ready for another four hours Roger, the machinery is still trying to __scale it to the right size for the station as well as compensating for the stations weight." _Luna replied.

_"__You have two hours to get it done, then the station will have to be on its way, even if it's not at maximum speed." _Roger sent as he uploaded coordinates for the three standing facilities to three of their ships, as soon as Omega Sevan was moved to safety the ships would launch with thousands of androids on each ship. Once there the stations would be seized and a hyperdrive sent through the gate so the stations could be moved to safety.

_"__That won't work Roger. I'd have to skip the calibration and scaling process." _Luna replied as Roger sent out a few hundred drones into the system to launch an ambush.

_"Then skip that." _Roger ordered. _"We need to move the station as soon as possible and then get working on the hyperdrives for the other stations __ready. __I've already uploaded the coordinates to the stations to the ship__s__,__ nine days after __we launch them they will reclaim the stations and the moment we control them I want them to move to safety."_

_ "__So I take it we're finally showing the universe our hand then?" _Luna replied.

_"No, but we might as well take the stations while they're already attacking us." _Roger replied. _"Let them wonder what just happened __and with any luck we can gain some more time while they try to understand what just happened."_

_ "Fine. I'll do what I can." _Luna replied as the waiting begun.

One hour and thirty-six minutes later two large grey things came out of two gigantic red hyperspace windows which managed to light up the station and the city more than their own lights could hope to manage.

"Veva do you copy?" Roger sent through subspace as he hesitated for a minute.

"I'm here, we're holding just outside the system." Veva replied a moment later.

"Good, I'm not quite sure what we're up against here but we only have two asteriods in the system, do a few jumps and see if you can pick up any traces of the ships." Roger ordered just as he got massive energy readings from the two grey asteroids moments before they opened up to let out many smaller rocks which each sent out a hail of nail sized blue bolts. "Delay that order, looks like the asteroids are ships, get back here and flank them."

"Yes Sir, we're less than a minute out." Veva replied as Roger activated the dormant drones in the midst of the oncoming rocks. In a few seconds the rocks had been reduced in numbers to only a few hundred, all while four large streams of golden lights came out of Omega Seven and raced towards the asteroids.

It didn't take more than thirty seconds for the four drone groups to arrive at the ships, which lacked both shields and any weapons apart from the rocky fighters, and begun to turn one of them into swish cheese. Just as the first asteroid split into thousands of smaller pieces a normal hyperspace window opened up behind the last one and the Ori mothership returned to normal space just a second before a plasma beam jumped out of its front and sliced clean through the second asteroid before gracing Atlantis shield.

When both ships had been vaporised by another group of drones the small fleet of Auroras moved in to make sure that nothing was left alive while three other Auroras angled away from the station and jumped away, each packed to the brim with androids and drones.

Somewhere in the void of space above the galactic plane of Pegasus a single 304 was floating and within its walls a meeting was taking place.

"You've had more than enough time to figure out what the hell happened on Atlantis. The city was in our hands but within a few hours we'd lost it again." Woolsey shouted at his commanders in the room.

"We think that a third power has entered this war My Lord." One of them answered.

"Either that or the SGC have managed to get their hands on some serious hardware, they even managed to override the shield on the stargate." Another said.

"Silence." Woolsey shouted as his eyes flashed and his voice changed several octaves. "I don't want any speculations, I want to know right now what really happened."

"There is no way to know for sure My Lord, not unless we can capture either one of those robots or someone who knows what happened." A third said.

"Then why have you not captured either of these things?" Woolsey asked.

"This is our last ship My Lord, we can't risk loosing it." The captain said.

"All I hear is excuses." Woolsey said as he drew a gun and fired four shoots, each bullet striking one of the men in the throat in such a way that the spin was severed and each man's eyes flashed one time before their bodies fell limp into the chairs and rag wearing slaves came from the shadows to remove the bodies.

"I can assure you My Lord, this is a third faction who have just entered the game." A woman said as he took out a rag and cleaned of the Captain's chair before sitting down in it. "A report came in less than an hour ago from Earth. Daedalus was boarded and her entire crew taken out before her computers where wiped clean except for what the ship needed to keep her crew alive and the ship from entering the atmosphere. Had it been the SGC they would surely have taken the ship for themselves My Lord."

"Your reasoning is sound Captain." Woolsey said as he returned the gun to its place at his side. "Lead the search for this new enemy, Earth have promised me two new 304s within the week and I shall move there so that you may search for this enemy without having to worry about my safety as soon as I am able."

"Yes My Lord." Everyone in the room said as both their chairs and the table between them sunk into the floor and they all knelt down as Woolsey left the room.

Back on Omega Seven the custom built hyperdrive powered up as a hyperspace window opened up and swallowed the station whole. Followed by the city, the Ori ship and their escort.

Some time later far from Omega Seven a Vordassiak, a six legged, four armed and two clawed bug like race, was entered a room filled to the brim with Duggerans, Sozons, two races of rodents who'd developed independently from each other but still the only thing separating the two was the colour of their fur, Eldirions, half transparent silicon based lifeforms in all kinds of colours, Amtocahs, a race of diversity with the only binding thing being their bio-mechanical appearance which could have come from an 80s sci fi movie, Afalians, a group of reptile races ranging from house to mouse size, Baxathis, a feline species who's smaller members could have been confused with normal house cats while the largest ones could be mistaken for lions, Seravmoranes, tiny insects who could be mistaken for dust in the air due to their size, and lastly Silhamews, the sentient plants.

As it came into the room the Vordassiak approached the podium which had been set up at the centre of the room with the thousands of other individuals positioned around the podium on raised platforms which got higher the further away from the podium they came. After a few seconds of silence the Vordassiak begun to speak, not any language ever spoken by man or Ancient, but rather a series clicking sounds. Around the room translations where given to everyone in their own language.

This went on for almost eight minutes until an alarm sounded, quickly followed by two hundred guards from the different species who begun direct and order everyone out of the room.

Six floors above Darkspring was hurrying to his gunnery station. The Sozons was a truly ancient race who'd been around since long before the Ancients had arrived in this reality and a few of the now living Sozons had even seen the Ancients rise to power through the use of stasis and their incredibly long life span. Darkspring himself had only seen their fall, but that was still a ridiculously long time.

As he came onto the outer platform of the station they where on the its defensive plates retracted into the roof while the yellow shield replaced it. From the walls the stations defensive weapons pushed outwards and looked into place with their barrels piercing the shield. His station was a rebuilt turret which had been far to large for him normally, but with some cushions and sticks he could sit on top of the turret and pound any attackers with small plasma bolts. On either side of him two larger anti-capital guns begun to power up while two huge Baxathis got behind the controls.

No more then five minutes after the station was ready for combat a hyperspace window opened up far from the station and a ship Darkspring hadn't seen since he was a child dropped out, an Aurora. For a good two minutes the ship just hung there, then every light on the ship powered up and two large yellow lights separated from the ship, quickly followed dozen of blue bolts. Seconds before the first blue bolt hit the stations shield Darkspring knew it was time to act, he'd awaited the moment the Ancients returned, he'd waited for a chance to full fill the promise that his mother's and father's generation had made to the Ancients. So without hesitation he spun the turret around and brought the barrel inside the shield so he could take out both of the anti-capital guns before they had a chance to damage the Ancient ship.

As soon as the both Baxathians where taken care of he lobbed one grenade at each of the guns so no one else would be able to use them without extensive repairs. Then he hurried along the outside to take down as many of the outer guns as he could. As it was only one of twenty such levels it wouldn't make such a big difference, but it might still allow the Ancients to do what they where there for.

When he got back to his own turret he could see the two yellow lights breaking into thousands of smaller ones as the station begun to fire into both them and the ship which was slowly approaching the station. After hesitating for just a second the rodent was of again, this time heading for the stations power distribution centre.

Surprisingly enough it had been left unguarded, so it was without interference that he could access the Ancient consoles there and turn of the artificial gravity for a few seconds before he sent twice the power to the artificial gravity so that anyone floating around got sent into the floor with a bang.

On the outside of the station on the level Darkspring had cleared out only minutes before the first of the androids came flying through the shield with the help of the drones they held onto for propulsion. As soon as the androids where on the floor the drones angled up and down and cut through to the rest of the twenty levels so the androids could take out the turrets and secure an approach for the ship.


End file.
